The Culture of Collaboration

Qwaq 2.0

I had a far-reaching discussion this morning with Greg Nuyens, CEO of Qwaq. When I first blogged about Qwaq on March 13 (you can read that post here), the start-up was, well, just starting up.

But on stage at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco yesterday, there was Greg Nuyens alongside Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner. Greg was demonstrating Qwaq Forums, which is hybrid real-time and asynchronous 3D collaboration for the enterprise. You can check out the video of Greg’s demo here (scroll down to Justin Rattner's September 20 keynote and launch the webcast. Greg's demo begins at around time stamp 21:00.)

Greg’s big news is that Intel, aside from being a user of Qwaq, is partnering with Qwaq. The two companies are integrating Intel’s Miramar technology, which discovers and defines relationships among desktop documents and other files, with Qwaq Forums. This will merge 2D enterprise applications into 3D collaborative work spaces.

Greg and I hashed out an easy explanation of what the integration means to users. I said “content management meets collaboration.” And Greg made it better with “collaborative content management.”

Collaboration Roundup: CEO private lives, Google collaboration, and Adobe CS3

I’ve been on the road speaking on The Culture of Collaboration a lot recently. Meantime, material for this blog has been piling up, so I’ll share a few items:

There was a fascinating story in The Wall Street Journal on September 5 headlined “Scholars Link Success of Firms to Lives of CEOs” by Mark Maremont. You can read the story for free here. The story describes new research involving how the personal lives of CEOs may impact stock prices of their companies. The theory is that a family death or a recent large house purchase are distractions that negatively affect shareholder value.

Among the studies the story mentions is one by two Penn State professors called “It’s All About Me” which is to be published in Administrative Science Quarterly. The study concludes that narcissistic executives take greater risks, leading to bigger swings in profitability of their companies. You can read the paper by Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick here.

The Wall Street Journal story hints that a CEO-centric star culture drives many companies. This is shortsighted leadership. It’s no surprise that narcissistic executives expose their companies to uncalculated risks. Too often, star cultures breed shoot-from-the-hip leadership rather than consensus building through broad input. As companies adopt more collaborative cultures, swagger and narcissism become less appropriate and one leader’s distractions are less likely to jeopardize the company.

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Google Docs let people collaborate on documents screen-to-screen. I’ve been checking out the tool recently. The drawback is that it’s not quite real time, but the potential is huge. Google hosts your documents for free, and you and your colleagues can log in and access them from anywhere.

Google has just enhanced the service with the ability to create and collaborate on presentations from anywhere. The capability stems in part from Google’s acquisition in April, 2007 of Tonic Systems. For more on this, check out Clint Boulton’s September 18 story in eWeek headlined “Google Offers ‘Collaboration in the Cloud.’”

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I’ve been meaning to write more about Adobe and its tools. Core customers for such Adobe products as Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver are highly creative—and creative people are often collaborative. I’ve been checking out some of Adobe’s products recently. Acrobat Connect is the web conferencing tool that enables screen-to-screen sharing and annotating of Adobe’s other products and other applications. You can read my June 18 post about Acrobat Connect here.

I’ve also been checking out the new Adobe Creative Suite 3, which coupled with Acrobat Connect, lends itself to collaborative design. Using CS3, geographically-dispersed designers can create vector graphics, develop web sites, edit images and layout pages collaboratively. Marketing people can collaborate with designers in real time, annotating everything from brochures to web designs.

Spiders Getting Collaboration Religion?

Are spiders becoming more collaborative? Experts are debating how and why spiders have spun a giant “web site” in Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas.

The spiders created a “white fairyland” encompassing many trees. What perplexes experts is that spiders are not particularly collaborative creatures. Unlike other insects including bees and ants, spiders normally work alone in gathering food and building their homes.

So what gives? One theory is that a rare social species of spider cooperated to build a large colony. Social spiders sometimes form colonies in tropical areas in the southern hemisphere, according to an expert quoted in The Dallas News. You can read the story here. Hmmm….social networking among spiders. What’s next? Spiderpedia or SlinkedIn?

Another theory is that multiple species of spiders may have acted in concert.

Perhaps spiders are beginning to understand the potential for collaboration. J

One thing is clear. The web is a huge accomplishment that one spider could never have achieved working alone.

And, yes, the giant Texas spider web is a reminder that we can create more value collaborating than competing.