Collaborating or Following? | Austin, Texas | Mar 2009

John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, Introducing the Collaboration Curve:

… the more participants–and interactions between those participants–you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement goes up.

Think about this for a minute. If what we’re seeing … is indicative of something broader, then we’re seeing the emergence of a new kind of learning curve as we scale connectivity and learning through pull, rather than scaling efficiency through push. We call it the “collaboration curve.”

Collaboration curves hold the potential to mobilize larger and more diverse groups of participants to innovate and create new value. In so doing they may also reverse the diminishing returns dynamics of the experience curve and deliver increasing returns to performance instead.

The evidence for the collaboration curve is, as yet, mostly anecdotal. But these curves may explain the rise of network-centric efforts ranging from open source software development to “crowdsourcing” to “networks of creation.” In nearly all of these group efforts, rapid leaps in performance improvement arise as participants get better faster by working with others. These leaps in performance describe the shape and power of the collaboration curve, a new force in our professional and personal lives that turns the experience curve on its side, and explains why the whole of us, working, playing, and, learning together, can often be greater than the sum of our parts.

Continuing the conversation, my comment:

The most important qualifier behind the emergence of collaboration curves: they require a “carefully designed and nurtured environment”.

While we are seeing increasing collaboration throughout the economy (increasing information sharing, increased communication, and increased packaging of economic value creation into individual actors structured in fluid work environments), much of the collaboration still hits the walls of our ability to process and structure information. We’re lost in a sea of information and knowledge created by increased “collaboration”; true collaboration is based on understanding and solving others’ problems, but much of today’s sharing collaboration is really publishing instead of a true “exchange” of value. Is this what you are seeing?

Are we stretching the boundaries of our systems, forcing us to create better environments and structures for collaboration? Where are the “best practice” collaboration environments emerging?

How do experience and collaboration curves differ for individuals, groups, companies and industries? Each have different incentives and structures for building, storing, using and sharing information and acquired knowledge: how do the curves “work” differently within these groups, and where are the biggest opportunities for change and progress?

How can we develop “personal APIs” into our lives to scale collaboration?

Returning to an old post, I wish I could copy me:

As Valeria [Maltoni] pointed out in the comments, the value is in “the experience of the execution”, which is created by one’s background, experience, knowledge, ideas and insights. The ability to apply those experiences to changing environments is what creates unique content, a style, a brand, all examples of sustainable competitive advantages.

However, packaging those experiences and acumen to deliver value requires me. It requires my time, research, understanding, indexing of other experiences, judgment, insights, and ability to structure, communicate and deliver valuable content and solutions.

Which means it requires me. And until it’s possible to copy and replicate me, it’s going to be pretty hard for me to scale.

The implication: how can I scale “me” from a one-to-one services model to a product-based model that still captures and delivers “me” and my insights?

Sharing, publishing and broadcasting information is easy, but listening, thinking and using our skills to develop customized solutions for people is hard. It’s easy to read anything I’ve written, it’s easy to download generic financial models I’ve created, but how will you make sense of it and use it?

“Scaling listening” * would be a start; how can we “scale doing”?

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* Ethan Bauley, of course…