The Xpragmatic View

Consultants are no futurists. However, while being involved in the promotion of new, emerging technologies, we somewhat become futurists and then, we should also act so.

To a large extent, our thinking is conditioned by what we know is possible. Therefore, our solutions often only address the symptoms of a problem instead of the root causes.

Collaboration is the participation of independent actors in mutual interactions to deliver a specific result, either chosen or not. The so-called collaboration is the result of the interactions that occur, but collaboration is not the purpose.

More and better collaboration has always been the mantra of Enterprise 2.0. Is Enterprise 2.0 a game changer for collaboration?

Collaboration within the enterprise is difficult because most of the defence mechanisms that exist in normal social contexts cannot be deployed within the enterprise.

Words are an extremely poor representation of our reality and it only gets worse when we write them down, especially in PowerPoint.

We have looked at how companies collaborate, so now let's move on to individuals.

The basic premise of collaboration is simple: working together to achieve a common goal. However, can it be done without consequences?

Like most things in life, collaboration is a simple thing. However, we humans have tendency not to think too much about simple things and then, they seem to become complex, since they rarely work out as planned. This paper is an exercise in simple thinking about simple things so that we might understand what makes them really work.

In this complex world we live in, most decisions require the involvement of multiple individuals. However, we must be aware of the fact that decisions are never made by a group, but always by individuals.