This document discusses setting up collaborative environments and provides two case studies. It examines dimensions of collaboration like structure, scale, and command versus consensus. Tools that can enable collaboration are discussed, like Google Apps, project management software, and wikis. The case studies illustrate how collaboration was used to write a research proposal and develop peer-to-peer business plans.

1. Setting up a collaborative environment
Alberto Cottica
D4SB Master Course
From opportunity assessment to business planning in social business
Lesson 1

2. Why collaborate?

3. Katrinalist, 2005: results in days

4. Grobanites for Charity, 2005: 100% efficiency

5. Wikipedia, 2007: the largest encyclopedia ever written

6. There’s a new game in town
•hierarchy
•market
•mass collaboration
... a source of competitiveness
for social business!

7. Tools: Google Apps

8. Tools: project management 37 Signals Basecamp, and
many others
groupware-as-service

9. Tools: Moodle

10. Tools: full-blown wiki Media Wiki: Wikipedia’s skeleton

11. Wrong question.

12. structure scale command vs. consensus
Important dimensions of collaboration

13. What kind of collaboration?

14. Network of Paul Erdős’s co-
What kind of collaboration? authors (reduced)

15. Network of health care lobbyists
by degrees of separation from
What kind of collaboration? Obama (bottom left) and Bush
(top right), 2009

16. Optimistic? Pessimistic?
Participation pyramids: why scale is important.

17. Case study: EC research proposal
• writing a bid for a European Commission research project
• a charismatic, hard working leader with a tendency to
micromanagement
• initially about 10 collaborators, to scale to about 30
• collaborators to revise, comment and edit drafts produced by
the leaders
• a three-month working period

18. •the core: Google Doc (wiki
functionalities, word processor look-
and-feel)
Solution: Google Docs + •coordination: Google Groups (mailing
list, doubles up as a forum)
Google Groups •the social arrangement: the leader
writes a draft, then he shares. Others
can comment, edit, fill in the blanks.

19. EC research proposal: the outcome
• successful collaboration: recognized value added
• team building
• the scope for collaboration expanded along the way
• more comments than edits, unclear permission structure

20. Case study: peer-to-peer business plans
• getting creatives to help each other in developing business
plans
• scalable community: starts at 0, up to 1000s of participants
• labour of love
• trust issues between Govt and creatives

21. social
blog
network
second physical
life meetups
Solution: a multichannel environment

22. Peer-to-peer business plans: the outcome
• many cool projects launched
• high user satisfaction
• 2/3 of interaction is peer-to-peer
• emergent uses, lots of alliances
• proprietary, rigid platform starts to feel too narrow
• Ministry bureaucracy stifling lightweight hiring

23. Assignment
• design a collaborative
system for students and
faculty of this course to
organize course material
and produce a shared
knowledge base
• interpret network shape,
scale and command vs.
consent of the intended
collaboration
• choose a tool based on
your interpretation