My friend via Twitter, Prem, (twice over, because both his handles are friends :D) got me thinking on ‘Social Collaboration’ ever since he wrote this post, attempting to define the term as used by its vendors. Despite a good discussion in the comments, a definition proved elusive. Though I began to agree with Prem’s assessment that ‘social’ was redundant, Gautam’s post on it did offer an interesting line of thought – that ‘social collaboration’ was emergent. He illustrates it with an example too. This was vaguely similar to one one of the ways in which I had tried to define the phrase, before I gave up. Here are the attempts.
The first was by tying it to the idea of a ‘social business’ (not the wiki one, but the Dachis group version), where 2 or more businesses collaborate on an objective that may be larger/ unrelated to their individual objectives. Obviously, this is more utopian than any vendor’s idea, so I dropped it.
Which led me to the second attempt, where I thought the tools of the (enterprise) social web would enable social interaction in various contexts and collaboration would be one of the products. (Probably like what Krish Ashok is building at TCS?) This would be around the premise that Gautam presented – even identifying the need would be the result of the social interactions and collaboration would follow.
While on this, I was reminded of Google Wave, where each participant could ‘drag’ people into a conversation. There were several instances when I, as an initiator of the conversation, did not have any control over the quantity or quality of the participants or even the morphing of the intent. I was also reminded of the last paragraph of this post I wrote in 2008, when Yammer came into the limelight – “..a bridge between Yammer and Twitter. One service that allows absolute transparent conversations within the organisations, and another that allows brands and organisations to be transparent with its end users.”A one way channel did open later. If any collaborator could ‘drag’ in another collaborator from a social web outside of the enterprise’ social web eg. a customer from Twitter, could that be social collaboration? On a related note, I also remember another post of mine when I came across Memolane and wrote about brand-streams connecting consumers and the enterprise. A couple of days back Memolane released an embeddable version which it hopes will be adopted by organisations.
Alternately/further, could it be like what happened right now – where neither Prem nor Gautam invited me to collaborate, but I did nevertheless, inserting myself into it thanks to having access to their thoughts, having a take (hopefully) on a thought Prem started and being able to connect it back to them. (forget Twitter, their blogs will have trackbacks) Even if they do ignore me and refuse to collaborate, my take would still exist, available to all who might be interested? That’s probably not what the sellers intended of ‘social collaboration’, but could that be what it evolves into?
I don’t know, and that’s why for now, I have parked this aside. 🙂
until next time, continue collaborating..
PS: Bonus Read – How Cisco integrates social media into the organisation
PPS: Back in a fortnight 🙂
Thanks for continuing the social collaboration discussion Manu & bringing it to an even wider audience. 🙂 Am so glad to seeing deepening interests and growing discussions around these topics in India too! 🙂
In such confusing moments around Collaboration (in which I have more than a passing interest), I tend to keep referring its definition as mentioned in this paper on stigmergic collaboration: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/03-elliott.php. Especially these two points:
1. Collaboration is dependent upon communication, and communication is a network phenomenon.
2. Collaboration is inherently composed of two primary components, without either of which collaboration cannot take place: social negotiation and creative output.
And when it comes to collaboration in enterprises, I focus on the next two points:
3. Collaboration in small groups (roughly 2-25) relies upon social negotiation to evolve and guide its process and creative output.
4. Collaboration in large groups (roughly 25-n) is enabled by stigmergy.
BTW, Emergence is a network phenomenon too like Communication & Collaboration. And one cannot have social anything unless theres a network of relationships. And hence my thought that social & collaboration are redundant terms.
Thanks Prem. Informative as always 🙂
In the last para, ‘social’ encompasses indirect relationships too? eg. we both are part of the facebook network, though we may not be connected to each other
Glad to be of help Manu. 🙂
Friend of a friend, weak ties, feathers of a bird, diadic & triadic ties, etc. all are important aspects of social networks, and I don’t mean facebook/anywhere online. In fact social networks have been studied even before online networks & communities started forming.
You might like to read this 2 year old interview with Prof. Robin Dunbar, whose work has been quite often misquoted as stating the human limit at relationships as 150 at max.
that link helps. i have often wondered (and written about) the number’s significance when brands/organisations engage on social networks.
Manu, happy to see you “socially” joining the conversation. Yes, any one who has access to the conversation can join and collaborate. Social tools are the way one has access to activity streams/updates – and bits and parts of actions leading to a larger collaborative effort. So personally I think social collaboration makes sense – as opposed to the conventional view of collaboration.
i can see that collaboration vs social collaboration has not ended 😀 Will have to think more on the value add that ‘social’ brings to collaboration 🙂