thumb|Catalan [[castellers collaborate, working together with a shared goal.]]

Collaboration (from Latin + ) is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together<!----> to complete a task or achieve a goal. A definition that takes technology into account is “working together to create value while sharing virtual or physical space.” Collaboration is similar to cooperation. The form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that work collaboratively often access greater resources, recognition and rewards when facing competition for finite resources.

Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication. Trade between nations is a form of collaboration between two societies which produce and exchange different portfolios of goods.

Historical examples

Trade

Trade began in prehistoric times and continues because it benefits all of its participants. Prehistoric peoples bartered goods and services with each other without a modern currency. Peter Watson dates the history of long-distance commerce from circa 150,000 years ago. Trade exists because different communities have a comparative advantage in the production of tradable goods.

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire used collaboration through ruling with visible control, which lasted from 31BC until (in the east) 1453CE, across around fifty countries. The growth of trade was supported by the stable administration of the Romans. Evidence shows that the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar were influenced by the Greek writer Xenophon's The Education of Cyrus on leadership. The Romans created a stable empire that benefitted both ruled and allied countries. Gold and silver were currencies created by the Romans which supported a market economy, leading to trading within the Roman Empire and taxes.

Hutterite, Austria (founded 16th century)

In Hutterite communities housing units are built and assigned to individual families, but belong to the colony with little personal property. Meals are taken by the entire colony in a common long room.

Oneida Community, Oneida, New York (1848)

The Oneida Community practiced Communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions) and Mutual Criticism, where every member of the community was subject to criticism by committee or the community as a whole, during a general meeting. The goal was to remove bad character traits.

Kibbutzim (1890)

A kibbutz is an Israeli collective community. The movement combines socialism and Zionism seeking a form of practical Labor Zionism. Choosing communal life, and inspired by their own ideology, kibbutz members developed a communal mode of living. The kibbutzim lasted for several generations as utopian communities, although most became capitalist enterprises and regular towns.

Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was a collaborative project during World War II among the Allies that developed the first atomic bomb. It was a collaborative effort by the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The value of this project as an influence on organized collaboration is attributed to Vannevar Bush. In early 1940, Bush lobbied for the creation of the National Defense Research Committee. Frustrated by previous bureaucratic failures in implementing technology in World War I, Bush sought to organize the scientific power of the United States for greater success.

Indigenous collaboration

Collaboration in indigenous communities, particularly in the Americas, often involves the entire community working toward a common goal in a horizontal structure with flexible leadership. Children in some indigenous American communities collaborate with the adults. Children can be contributors in the process of meeting objectives by taking on tasks that suit their skills.

Indigenous learning techniques comprise Learning by Observing and Pitching In. For example, a study of Mayan fathers and children with traditional Indigenous ways of learning worked together in collaboration more frequently when building a 3D model puzzle than Mayan fathers with western schooling. Children from indigenous-heritage communities want to help around the house voluntarily.

In the Mazahua Indigenous community of Mexico, school children show initiative and autonomy by contributing in their classroom, completing activities as a whole, assisting and correcting their teacher during lectures when a mistake is made. Fifth and sixth graders in the community work with the teacher installing a classroom window; the installation becomes a class project in which the students participate in the process alongside the teacher. They all work together without needing leadership, and their movements are all in sync and flowing. It is not a process of instruction, but rather a hands-on experience in which students work together as a synchronous group with the teacher, switching roles and sharing tasks. In these communities, collaboration is emphasized, and learners are trusted to take initiative. While one works, the other watches intently and all are allowed to attempt tasks with the more experienced stepping in to complete more complex parts, while others pay close attention.

Game theory

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics, computer science, and economics that looks at situations where multiple players make decisions in an attempt to maximize their returns. The first documented discussion of game theory is in a letter written by James Waldegrave, 1st Earl Waldegrave in 1713. Antoine Augustin Cournot's Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth in 1838 provided the first general theory. In 1928 it became a recognized field when John von Neumann published a series of papers. Von Neumann's work in game theory culminated in the 1944 book The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.

Military-industrial complex

The term military-industrial complex refers to a close and symbiotic relationship among a nation's armed forces, its private industry, and associated political interests. In such a system, the military is dependent on industry to supply material and other support, while the defence industry depends on government for revenue.

Skunk Works

Skunk Works is a term used in engineering and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with advanced or secret projects. One such group was created at Lockheed in 1943. The team developed highly innovative aircraft in short time frames, notably beating its first deadline by 37 days.

Project management

thumb|right|The 2,751 [[Liberty ships built in four years by the United States during World War II required new approaches in organization and manufacturing.]]

As a discipline, project management developed from different fields including construction, engineering and defense. In the United States, the forefather of project management is Henry Gantt, who is known for his use of the "bar" chart as a project management tool, for being an associate of Frederick Winslow Taylor's theories of scientific management, and for his study of the management of Navy ship building. His work is the forerunner to many modern project management tools including the work breakdown structure (WBS) and resource allocation.

The 1950s marked the beginning of the modern project management era. Again, in the United States, prior to the 1950s, projects were managed on an ad hoc basis using mostly Gantt charts, and informal techniques and tools. At that time, two mathematical project scheduling models were developed: (1) the "Program Evaluation and Review Technique" or PERT, developed as part of the United States Navy's (in conjunction with the Lockheed Corporation) Polaris missile submarine program; and (2) the "Critical Path Method" (CPM) developed in a joint venture by both DuPont Corporation and Remington Rand Corporation for managing plant maintenance projects. These mathematical techniques quickly spread into many private enterprises.

In 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was formed to serve the interest of the project management industry. The premise of PMI is that the tools and techniques of project management are common even among the widespread application of projects from the software industry to the construction industry. In 1981, the PMI Board of Directors authorized the development of what has become A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), standards and guidelines of practice that are widely used throughout the profession. The International Project Management Association (IPMA), founded in Europe in 1967, has undergone a similar development and instituted the IPMA Project Baseline. Both organizations are now participating in the development of a global project management standard.

However, the exorbitant cost overruns and missed deadlines of large-scale infrastructure, military R&D/procurement and utility projects in the US demonstrates that these advances have not been able to overcome the challenges of such projects.

Academia

Black Mountain College

Founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier and other former faculty of Rollins College, Black Mountain College was experimental by nature and committed to an interdisciplinary approach, attracting a faculty which included leading visual artists, poets and designers.

Operating in a relatively isolated rural location with little budget, Black Mountain fostered an informal and collaborative spirit. Innovations, relationships and unexpected connections formed at Black Mountain had a lasting influence on the postwar American art scene, high culture and eventually pop culture. Buckminster Fuller met student Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain, and the result was the first geodesic dome (improvised out of slats in the school's back yard); Merce Cunningham formed his dance company; and John Cage staged his first happening.

Black Mountain College was a liberal arts school that grew out of the progressive education movement. In its day it was a unique educational experiment for the artists and writers who conducted it and was an incubator for the American avant garde.

Learning

thumb|right|The Evergreen signature clock tower

Dr. Wolff-Michael Roth and Stuart Lee of the University of Victoria assert that until the early 1990s the individual was the 'unit of instruction' and the focus of research. The two observed that researchers and practitioners switched to the idea that "knowing" is better thought of as a cultural practice. Roth and Lee also claim

Occupational examples

Arts

Figurative arts

The romanticized notion of a lone, genius artist has existed since the time of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, published in 1568. Vasari promulgated the idea that artistic skill was endowed upon chosen individuals by gods, which created an enduring and largely false popular misunderstanding of many artistic processes. Artists have used collaboration to complete large scale works for centuries, but the myth of the lone artist was not widely questioned until the 1960s and 1970s.

Collaborative art groups include:

  • Dada (1913)
  • Fluxus (1957)
  • Situationist International (1957)
  • Experiments in Art and Technology (1967)
  • Mujeres Muralistas (1973)
  • Colab (1977)
  • Guerrilla Girls (1985)
  • SITO (1993)

Ballet

Ballet is a collaborative art form. It entails music, dancers, costumes, a venue, lighting, etc. Hypothetically, one person could control all of this, but most often every work of ballet is the by-product of collaboration. From the earliest formal works of ballet, to the great 19th century masterpieces of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa, to the 20th century masterworks of George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky, to today's ballet companies, feature strong collaborative connections between choreographers, composers and costume designers are essential. Within dance as an art form, there is also the collaboration between choreographer and dancer. The choreographer creates a movement in her/his head and then physically demonstrates the movement to the dancer, which the dancer sees and attempts to either mimic or interpret.

Music

Musical collaboration occurs when musicians in different places or groups work on the piece. Typically, multiple parties are involved (singers, songwriters, lyricists, composers, and producers) and come together to create one work. For example, one specific collaboration from recent times (2015) was the song "FourFiveSeconds". This single represents a type of collaboration because it was developed by pop idol Rihanna, Paul McCartney (former bassist, composer and vocalist for The Beatles), and rapper/composer Kanye West. Websites and software facilitate musical collaboration over the Internet, resulting in the emergence of online bands.

Several awards exist specifically for collaboration in music:

  • Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals—awarded since 1988
  • Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals—awarded since 1995
  • Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration—awarded since 2002

Collaboration has been a constant feature of electroacoustic music, due to the technology's complexity. Embedding technological tools into the process stimulated the emergence of new agents with new expertise: the musical assistant, the technician, the computer music designer, the music mediator (a profession that has been described and defined in different ways over the years) – aiding with writing, creating new instruments, recording and/or performance. The musical assistant explains developments in musical research and translates artistic ideas into programming languages. Finally, he or she transforms those ideas into a score or a computer program and often performs the musical piece during the concerts. Examples of collaboration include Pierre Boulez and Andrew Gerzso, Alvise Vidolin and Luigi Nono, Jonathan Harvey and Gilbert Nouno.

Classical music

Although relatively rare compared with collaboration in popular music, there have been some notable examples of music written collaboratively by classical composers. Perhaps the best-known examples are:

  • Hexameron, a set of variations for solo piano on a theme from Vincenzo Bellini's opera I puritani. It was written and first performed in 1837. The contributors were Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Carl Czerny, Sigismond Thalberg, Johann Peter Pixis, and Henri Herz.
  • The F-A-E Sonata, a sonata for violin and piano, written in 1853 as a gift for the violinist Joseph Joachim. The composers were Albert Dietrich (first movement), Robert Schumann (second and fourth movements), and Johannes Brahms (third movement).

Entertainment

Collaboration in entertainment dates from the origin of theatrical productions, millennia ago. It takes the form of writers, directors, actors, producers and other individuals or groups working on the same production. In the twenty-first century, new technology has enhanced collaboration. A system developed by Will Wright for the TV series title Bar Karma on CurrentTV facilitates plot collaboration over the Internet. Screenwriter organizations bring together professional and amateur writers and filmmakers.

Business

Collaboration in business can be found both within and across organizations, and examples range from formalised partnerships, use of coworking spaces where freelancers can work with others in a collaborative environment and crowd funding, to the complexity of a multinational corporation. Inter-organizational collaboration brings participating parties to invest resources, mutually achieve goals, share information, resources, rewards and responsibilities, as well as make joint decisions and solve problems. Collaboration between public, private and voluntary sectors can be effective in tackling complex policy problems, but may be handled more effectively by boundary-spanning teams and networks than by formal organizational structures. In turn, business and management scholars have paid much attention to the importance of both formal and informal mechanisms to support inter-organizational collaboration. They especially point to the role of contractual and relational mechanisms and the inherent tensions between the two. Global manufacturer Unilever offers to collaborate with innovating start-up businesses, and its "Unilever Foundry" refers to over 400 examples of "strategic collaboration" in this field. Collaborative procurement has been commended as a means of achieving financial savings and operational efficiency in the acquisition of common goods and services in the public sector, and producing mutually beneficial results in the private sector. Collaboration allows for better communication within organizations and along supply chains. It is a way of coordinating different ideas from numerous people to generate a wide variety of knowledge. Collaboration with a few selected firms has been shown to positively impact firm performance and innovation outcomes.

Technology has provided the internet, wireless connectivity and collaboration tools such as blogs and wikis, and has as such created the possibility of "mass collaboration". People are able to rapidly communicate and share ideas, crossing longstanding geographical and cultural boundaries. Social networks permeate business culture where collaborative uses include file sharing and knowledge transfer. According to author Evan Rosen command-and-control organizational structures inhibit collaboration and replacing such structures allows collaboration to flourish. An article by Lee Gomes published in the MIT Technology Review in 2011 quotes Rosen as saying that star-oriented culture, which is prevalent in American society and in organizations, "inhibits the very collaboration that he maintains can make companies more effective".

Studies have found that collaboration can increase achievement and productivity. However, Bill Huber, former chair of the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM, now World Commerce & Contracting), notes that not all companies have what he calls "collaborative DNA". Huber argues that