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If Collaboration is the Killer App for Bussiness

By Tac Anderson ⋅ March 23, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment
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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about collaboration, open business models and open innovation. When I think about the future of business, how it operates and how its structured and if collaboration really becomes the killer app…

What happens when collaboration with all stakeholders is fully integrated into all parts of your business?

Customer feedback and collaboration would be integrated across the entire product life cycle. Some of this would be aggregation via social networks, some of this would be active community collaboration.

Product are suggested and designed with the appropriate level of customer input. Depending on the product, company and types of customers, different levels of collaboration and input are needed.

At the right stages the right partners are brought in to further product development. Supply chain partners, design and marketing agencies need to be brought in early enough into the process and in the same collaborative environment to bring the product to life.

If you’re not the right company to fulfill the product need you pass it off to competitors/collaborators to fulfill. Relationships with competitors and collaborators need to be healthy and open. To retain the trust of your customers you need to be willing to admit when you’re company isn’t the right fit for a product.

As the product reaches completion customer collaborators become beta testers and quality assurance. Again the right level of input and collaboration at the right stages of development.

Customers now become advocates as the product launches. If done right customer collaborators now have a vested interested in the product and become evangelists for the product.

Since customers were integrated throughout the process they are also there for support. Customer driven support forums are hugely successful today, how much better will they be when the customer actually had a hand in product development?

What does that company look like? Organizationally how does a company need to be structured to enable this? What processes are needed, and more importantly, what processes need to be thrown out?

How much Marketing/PR as we know it today do you need at that point? What would Marketing/PR even look like? How would an agency support that work?

What tools do we need to make this happen?

How do we get from here to there?

Photo credit by Balakov

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About Tac

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.

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  • http://local-marketplace.com/ Steve Koss

    Another superb post Tac!

    The “Cloud” could be argued that this is the killer application and ‘collaboration’ is the killer innovation process. This keeps the people, process, technology in the proper sequence for prolific success.

    Silos of collaboration are taking place across America and the world. An easy task, no…social technologies are merely a tool in the collaboration process. Two excellent reads to see that you heretical question of “how do we get from here to there?” is taking place today are “Influencer” and the social buzz angle (nothing really new, except the small world theory has been smashed to zero) “The Frog and Prince.”

    The funny thing is that at times it is about the simple…we took your question and modified it to “how can we work (collaborate) together?” to partner with city governments…surprisingly, no one ever asked or tried before!

    Cheers…Steve

  • http://www.ubervu.com/conversations/www.newcommbiz.com/if-collaboration-is-the-killer-app-for-bussiness/ uberVU - social comments

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by tacanderson: If Collaboration is the Killer App for Bussiness http://bit.ly/bc8qIi (new post)…

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

    The problem is that collaboration is only happening in pockets and it's not integrated into the overall business.

    Companies are trying to operationalize social media into their current processes. Which isn't bad but ideally companies should be optimizing their business to maximize the benefits of social media. We're not there yet but we will be.

  • jacekpola

    Great article! That's what we believe here at Workube.com. We offer a unique solution for internal and external collaboration and communication. Just launched the site few days ago.
    Best,
    Jacek

  • nilofermerchant

    Collaboration surely is the killer app because it means we are co-laboring and able to come together in nimble teams to solve problems, figure out what to design/build, talk with our customers not at our customers, etc. Having done collaborative strategy development for several years now, showing teams how to come together and formulate a strategy that they then implement. I've just recently published a book with O'Reilly on the topic, called The New How. From my experience across many companies like Nokia, Adobe, SYMC and HP, the toughest part isn't the way a company deals with the broader market, but how a (bigger) company deals across-silos and isolated roles where we measure the specific thing a person does rather than measure/reward the outcome. Until that changes, behavior may not.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

    Can collaboration be effective in siloed environments or do we need a total overhaul? If so, what does that look like? I look forward to your book, sounds interesting.

  • http://topsy.com/trackback?url=http://www.newcommbiz.com/if-collaboration-is-the-killer-app-for-bussiness/ Tweets that mention If Collaboration is the Killer App for Bussiness — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tac Anderson, Craig M. Jamieson, mo' stash, Steve Koss, clipotech knowledge and others. clipotech knowledge said: If Collaboration is the Killer App for Bussiness http://goo.gl/fb/3w5J http://j.mp/KnowMore [...]

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    [...] Some may say that curiosity killed the cat, but that is far from the truth. It makes creativity happen. Creativity will in turn open your mind to assist you in your efforts to do your best. Ask questions! Don’t assume, because you know what happens when you do. Nothing. Don’t stifle yourself by not asking questions. Even if you think you know it all, be humble, and use the resources available to you. [...]

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