The Culture of Collaboration

Collaboration Curing Multiple Sclerosis

It was definitely unorthodox. Many said it was impossible. But it looks like The Myelin Repair Foundation has done it. MRF, which is working on curing multiple sclerosis, is about to meet its ambitious goal of licensing a discovery for commercial drug development within five years. Through a collaborative research model, the Silicon Valley-based foundation has reduced drug development time from 15 years to 5 years. MRF is negotiating with a biotech company and believes a license agreement is in the works.

 

Intuit Founder Scott Cook, a foundation supporter, suggested I research MRF when I was writing The Culture of Collaboration book.  In the book, I tell the story of how Scott Johnson, who has MS, learned that a cure was taking three or four times as long because of competition among researchers. This prompted Johnson to rethink the culture of medical research and begin changing that culture. Scientists often refuse to share data and information, because they compete for limited grant money and for publishing articles in top medical journals. The answer was to get experts in different disciplines to collaborate. So Johnson raised money, ultimately plowed $20 million into drug discovery work, and built a collaborative medical research foundation.

 

Johnson brought in fellow tech start-up veteran Russell Bromley as chief operating officer. And Johnson and Bromley recruited five principal investigators who head labs.  They proposed a level of collaboration for curing disease that none of the scientists had ever experienced. Their focus was to repair myelin, the sheath that surrounds the nerves, which MS damages. Johnson and Bromley with input from the researchers developed a Collaborative Research Process, which addresses everything from tools to incentives.

 

Since its founding in 2004, MRF has advanced work towards a cure for MS beyond anything anybody else had imagined within this timeframe. “Because of our work, we have a much clearer understanding of how to drive neural stem cells to the site of myelin damage in the central nervous system and instruct the myelin-producing cells to remyelinate,” Johnson writes in his recent president’s message.

 

The Myelin Repair Foundation’s game-changing collaborative approach sets a new standard for medical research. The broader medical research community should sit up and take notice that collaboration among researchers creates greater value than competition.

 

Kaiser’s Garfield Center Enhances Innovation, Collaboration

With the growing use of tools enabling collaboration at a distance, it’s easy to forget the value of same-room collaboration and the role of the physical workplace environment. Environment—both physical and virtual-- is one of the Ten Cultural Elements of Collaboration that I identify in The Culture of Collaboration book.

 

It’s essential to bring collaborative capabilities to people so that collaboration becomes integrated with work styles. Forcing people to walk down the hall or go someplace to collaborate falls short. Therefore, it may seem counter-intuitive that dedicated collaborative spaces not only enhance collaboration, but also are crucial components of collaborative organizations.

 

Our research at The Culture of Collaboration® Institute shows that the most collaborative organizations integrate dedicated collaborative spaces into work flow. The distinction is that these physical spaces are by no means the primary means of organizational collaboration. In some cases, dedicated collaborative spaces bridge physical and virtual environments by including geographically-dispersed team members through telepresence or videoconferencing.  

 

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to explore one such dedicated collaborative space. From the outside, Kaiser Permanente’s Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center looks like a warehouse. In fact, it’s a former check processing center in an industrial park in San Leandro, California. On the inside, the Garfield Center is anything but ordinary. The future of healthcare delivery is unfolding in this 37-thousand square foot laboratory. The Garfield Center includes multiple environments ranging from patient room prototypes to homes outfitted with monitoring and telemedicine technologies.

 

There are lots of gee-whiz technologies and environments including a concept operating room in which researchers are testing tools including augmented virtual reality. But what’s most significant about the Garfield Center is that people from across Kaiser regardless of level, role or region come together to brainstorm, innovate and collaborate. Doctors and nurses partner with architects and technologists to create prototypes for patient care in this “touchdown location for innovation work” as Sherry Fry, operations specialist for the Center, describes it. Anybody at Kaiser can use the facility as long as the activity is interdisciplinary. “The Garfield Center has become synonymous with innovation at Kaiser,” notes Dr. Yan Chow, associate director of innovation and advanced technology for Kaiser Permanente.

 

In developing the 3-year-old Garfield Center, Kaiser researchers studied models outside healthcare, notably the McDonald’s Innovation Center near Chicago. Kaiser also studied Mayo Clinic's S.P.A.R.C. unit, which I describe in my book. S.P.A.R.C. stands for See Plan Act Refine Communicate. Through S.P.A.R.C., Mayo assembles cross-functional collaborators to conduct live prototyping of healthcare service delivery.

 

The value of dedicated collaborative spaces is that they help break down barriers among silos. As doctors engage architects and facilities people brainstorm with technologists, ideas become prototypes which ultimately deliver measurable value.

Reflection Enhances Collaboration

Recently, I’ve grown concerned about the lack of reflection that can compromise collaboration. I define reflection as “pausing to think.” Reflection is increasingly lost in our interrupt and interact-driven culture. It may seem counter-intuitive in that reflection suggests working alone or in a vacuum. But there’s a difference.

 

Some people think they do their best work by going off in a corner and making their mistakes in private. They prefer to interact with others only after they feel they got their part right on their own. Once their part is complete, they prefer to toss their work over the fence to the next person to do their part. This assembly-line approach to decision making, problem solving and product and service development compromises value.  This behavior clearly undermines collaboration.

 

The other extreme is that in this Twitter-twitching, Facebook feeding, blog-obsessed culture, we feel compelled to constantly interact. Some health experts insist the fallout from these potentially obsessive behaviors includes everything from repetitive strain injuries to heart attacks, not to mention neglect of loved ones or divorce. Like endless face-to-face meetings, much of this online interaction is falsely labeled collaboration.

 

In The Culture of Collaboration book, I define collaboration as “working together to create value while sharing virtual or physical space.” Also, value is one of the Ten Cultural Elements of Collaboration that I identify in the book. Creating value is critical to collaboration. In fact, it’s a useful acid test.

 

Social networking includes a portfolio of tools and behaviors that can lead to collaboration, but it takes  more than a tweet, post, text or instant message to collaborate. Social networking and social media output can be much like cable television chatter. The difference is that social networking lets us participate, and we tend to dip in and out all day long. It’s easy to devote big chunks of time to chatter. And there’s nothing wrong with chatter, but it’s not necessarily collaboration.

 

Constant interaction without reflection can compromise collaboration and value creation. Brainstorming, sharing ideas, and co-creation produces incredible value. When we pause to think, however, we can contribute more effectively when we’re collaborating. Reflection enhances value creation for collaborators.

 

Using collaborative tools for chatter and fun helps instill behavior that sparks collaboration, but it’s easy to just keep chattering and never get around to creating value. Use value creation as an acid test for collaboration, and we derive greater satisfaction and real results from social networking and other collaborative tools. And reflection is part of that equation.

Telehealth Revisited

Telehealth is back on radar screens of policy makers, health care professionals, engineers and marketers. As we rethink healthcare economics and delivery systems, technology advances are enabling new approaches and better execution of old approaches. Telehealth can enable healthcare access for underserved populations including rural areas, inner city areas, isolated regions, developing countries, and prisons.

 

 Telepresence creates new opportunities for virtual consultations to approximate face-to-face encounters between providers and patients and among providers. Tandberg and Polycom, established vendors in  telehealth, now offer telepresence for healthcare. Polycom announced last month at the American Telemedicine Association 14th Annual Meeting and Exposition that the Michigan Department of Corrections is using Polycom telepresence for everything from tele-psychiatry to tele-nephrology.  Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group has developed HealthPresence, which combines Cisco TelePresence with patient health data captured by connected medical devices such as stethoscopes and vital signs monitors.

 

In the late 1990’s, I conducted research in telehealth and wrote the “Personal Telemedicine” column for Telemedicine Today magazine. The magazine allowed me to write about every aspect of telehealth with an emphasis on how the tools and delivery mechanisms impact people. The name of the column played off my first book, Personal Videoconferencing (Manning/Prentice Hall, 1996). Since many of the telehealth topics I researched then are now re-emerging, I’ll share one column that’s still available online. It’s called "Twenty Minutes in the Life of a Tele-Home Health Nurse," which appeared in the December, 1997 issue of Telemedicine Today. You can read the column here.