Collaboration, path into a future

We have been seeing an optimistic change in many organisations' mindset when it comes to collaboration. For many years, we heard that working together can lead to a big mess – too many misunderstandings, too much consensus, and too much convergent thinking. Lately, almost all of the work being done around the topic of innovation is highlighting the importance of collaboration. Why? For us it comes down to people understanding and valuing the outcome of diverse teams. For instance, collaboration increases the chances of associations and iterations between ideas that result in innovative solutions and combinations. According to Robert Weisberg, author of Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts, innovative outcomes are a result of chains of connected ideas that flesh out the original thinking. And this is only possible through the connections and energy from a wide and multi-cultural group of people.

So it is not really surprising that collaboration, crowdsoucing and ‘matchmaking’ platforms are springing up like mushrooms after full moon! Just in our little network we have representatives from those that are associated with opening up the crowd for problem solving such as NineSigma and Innocentive, more recently Innosabi, Hype and Hyve, to ones that allow finding the right people at the right point in time such as Bridgelight and MaxImpact. And not to forget Katerva which has set itself the goal of ‘accelerating the future’ by identifying, assessing and scaling sustainability-driving innovation. Being passionate about innovation, collaboration and sustainability and holding the belief of shaping the future rather than letting it happen to us, has led Bettina to get more involve in Katerva recently, helping to develop, bring together and engage Katerva’s diverse communities of innovators, spotters, experts, amplifiers, investors, and corporations. Watch this space - and let us know if you too might like to get involved!