collaborative forms

My current professional life is focused on technical solutions to better enable both inter and extra corporate collaboration. When speaking with companies about the need and value of collaboration, I find that we often get tripped up in problems of ambiguity with the term itself. For clarity, I use the following model when speaking about collaborative forms with clients.

Communities of Interest are loose associations of like-minded people with some common pursuit. They don't necessarily work in concert, but derive some benefit from being associated with one another. A professional association is a good example of a community of interest - something like AERDO in the area of Christian relief. While participants all have interest in Christ-centered relief work, a community of interest may bring together organizations with different specialties (child relief and education, AIDS relief, etc.)

Communities of Practice are more formal in nature but not necessarily exclusive. These groups generally have some common objective in mind - although the objective may evolve over time. While a community of interest may bring together those with like interests but with different focus, a community of practice focus on a particular aspect of like interest. For example: child relief and education. Or, the community of practice could cross different types of relief, but focus on some aspect of it … for example, a group of organizations that routinely submit and evaluate impact assessments for the purpose of improving field effectiveness. Participants not only benefit from association, but serve to benefit the whole through codification of best practices, formal knowledge sharing and feedback mechanisms.

Formalized Teams have controlled membership and are formed with one particular objective. It's focus is tactical collaboration. The team typically has a lifespan (could be renewable) based upon what it is intended to do. The team could be made of up like individuals (a medical relief team) or be more cross functional in nature.

The final form of collaboration occurs through what I call Linear Cooperation. These are extremely well structured partnerships that allow people or organizations to focus on a specialty that feeds a very specific objective. It allows each participant the ability to serve the whole while maximizing efficiencies and minimizing waste. While extremely efficient, these teams require a maturity and tight alignment of purpose and role. In essence, its Ford's assembly line. One organization might focus on raising funds to feed an organization that manages logistics for another that handles field distribution working with someone else who handles medical care.