The Culture of Collaboration: Maximizing Time, Talent and Tools to Create Value in the Global Economy

By Evan Rosen

Gold medal winner in the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards, The Culture of Collaboration describes how collaborative culture is changing business models and the nature of work. Collaboration and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 097746170X
• ISBN13: 9780977461707
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Red Ape Publishing
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

How To Succeed In Business (By Working Together)

America, once the undisputed business, industrial and technological leader on planet Earth, has surrendered that position to a number of other nations. The most obvious example is the American automotive industry and the Japanese, who took us to school on manufacturing and selling cars about 60 years after Henry Ford told Americans they could have "any color Model-T they want, so long as it's black". The secret weapon these "foreigners" wielded against the American manufacturing monolith was, obviously enough: Collaboration. Therein lies the crux of Evan Rosen's latest book, a sort of how-to manual for companies of all sizes wishing to maximize the effort and talent of their employees, and create something of value, which usually leads to profit. He describes the ins and outs of business collaboration, from the physical arrangement of furniture and office space, to overcoming the psychological barriers, to the technological advances that allow colleagues on opposite sides of the globe to converse instantly, instead of scheduling a meeting weeks or months in advance and travelling 12,000 miles to get there. It's a fascinating read, as one hears some remarkable stories of companies and organizations that understood the importance of collaboration before it became fashionable in the USA. Anyone who has spent any time in the American corporate world (or reads "Dilbert" on a regular basis) will be asking themselves why more companies don't practice effective collaboration on a regular basis. The answer may be inertia, job security, (or insecurity), or just good old rugged American individualism. But there is no longer any excuse, with a book like "The Culture of Collaboration" on the market. If you, and your business, want to "create value" (ie profit and success) you will buy copies of this book for yourself and all your managers, quiz them on it, and then put these techniques into practice.

Going Past the Buzzwords of Collaboration with Effective Strategies and Analysis

Man is a social animal. While everyone knows this saying do we truly understand its profound implications? As humans, collaboration is built into our DNA and is a large part of our evolutionary success. Look around. Every day we form elaborate groups, companies, government, religions, and softball teams. Now collaboration's competitive value has been exponentially increased by new technologies. Companies are being forced to embrace new methods or be outperformed by those that do. Evan Rosen is an expert on the subject and this book "Culture of Collaboration" is an essential read. While collaboration's value is becoming obvious to even the most traditional executivees, but its implementation is not easy. Just as you can't walk into your boardroom and tell everyone to be smarter or more efficient, you can't simply tell your organization to collaborate. Collaboration is a skill with methodologies, best-practices, and tools. Evan walks us through the important steps to gain the most value from collaboration using inside knowledge from top companies like Toyota, Dreamworks, and HP. He goes over the newest tools and technologies. And perhaps most importantly he covers how to shift from a traditional to a collaborative organization, highlighting pitfalls that many companies fall prey to. He tackles deep questions with solid strategies and examples. For example, how do privacy laws or trade secrets affect collaborative efforts? When choosing collaborative technologies should I focus on asynchronous technologies, such as message boards or synchronous tools such as video conferencing? As the founder of the first collaborative media creation platform, no one could be a bigger proponent of collaboration than I. And I feel that no one does a better job of highlighting the importance and guiding the organizations to higher results through collaboration than Evan Rosen in his newest book "Culture of Collaboration."

A practical guide to collaboration in the workplace

The Summary Evan Rosen has consolidated the latest ideas on collaboration and brought them together into an informative and practical book. Collaboration is becoming more and more important whether you are trying to manage a global workforce or just need to get stove-pipe departments to work together you will learn a lot from this book. The Audience The Culture of Collaboration is a practical guide aimed at anyone interested in fostering collaboration in their workplaces. Managers and leaders should definitely check this book out. The ideas around collaboration with a multi-cultural and global work force are extremely interesting to anyone leading off-shore initiatives. The book is full of practical advice that can be leveraged immediately. The Details There have been a number of books recently on collaboration from Group Genius, X-Teams to some older titles like `Organizing Genius' and `How Breakthroughs Happen'. There have also been many books on recent technologies that leverage the genius of groups i.e. wikinomics, the wealth of networks. Evan Rosen's book brings all these elements together from the technologies, tools, and theories around collaboration into a practical guide. This is not by any means a lightweight `how-to' guide, but more of a roadmap to not only understand the power of collaboration but also to leverage it in your organization. Rosen explains the principles of collaboration through personal stories and examples from some new and unique sources. Other books on collaboration use examples from the usual suspects Lockheed's SunkWorks and IDEO but Rosen draws examples from the Mayo Clinic, George Lucas's ILM (Industrial Light and Magic), Boeing and Toyota. The choice of the Mayo clinic was surprising at first and then as Rosen explained the culture behind how the clinic was started and some of their collaborative practices; it became obvious that this was an important and often over-looked example of a collaborative and innovative environment. While the first half of the book explores the current trends and the need for collaboration, the last few chapters bring the ideas of collaboration together into a practical guide that is worth the price of the book alone. How to use collaboration tools to foster the right culture, which tools to use to solve different issues and challenges and advice to managers and leaders on fostering collaboration. The Ideas: Rosen draws from some unique examples and there were many ideas that made me think: - Presence - the use of tools like IM to foster collaboration across teams. Being able to tell if someone is available or not. The in-box culture is dead and now replaced by tools that incorporate elements of `Presence' - Why Smoking can get you promoted - ok that wasn't the point that was made, but Rosen does explain that conversations and groups that form around stepping outside for a `smoke', can generate the kind of cross-functional and cross-hierarchical connections that companies need. - M

Working Together to Create Value

This book drives deep into the communication technology and organization behavior issues that support collaboration. The author identifies a series of cultural elements that serve to frame effective collaboration within companies and between supply chain partners, responding to the realities of our more economically networked business world. Rosen's working definition of collaboration involves "working together to create value while sharing virtual or physical space..." His elements of collaboration include trust, environment and communication. The "presence" of people, ideas, and action in collaborative cultures serves to speed the flow of development, planning and decision making. Net leadership becomes more dispersed, broader discernment is possible, stronger interactions are experienced, and organizations gain bench strength. The proper physical and virtual environment, combined with the right communication resources enables collaborative cultures. This book also has a very informative section on the technical and operational tools that support communication and collaboration. It's helpful to have a communications expert frame the challenges and opportunities.

A must read on business collaboration.

In this very interesting and useful book, the author shows how collaboration creates value in business. This is unlike other boring business books I've read, this one's easy to read, well-illustrated, and thought-provoking. This book gives real-world examples from a variety of different industries and shows that a collaborative organizational culture is what sets apart large companies like Toyota, Boeing and Procter & Gamble. Rosen also includes DreamWorks Animation, Industrial Light & Magic, the Mayo Clinic, the Myelin Repair Foundation and others. Besides culture, the author covers tools, processes and workplace environment. I highly recommend this book.