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The need for collaboration

Written by: Lee Meadows

Article Overview: This article focuses on the importance of accessing other resources to help accomplish much needed tasks. Joint projects can be beneficial to cooperating organizations.

The need for collaboration

Perhaps it is a sign of a different approach to competition when the ‘spirit of collaboration’ compels businesses to look beyond their immediate needs and think about the bigger global picture. When supposed rivals put aside their petty differences in the spirit of going after a bigger prize, then the landscape shifts from a narrow focus to a broader one in which strategic moves are dictated by who is working with you to achieve a mutually rewarding goal. The question remains, ‘Can organizations that provide a similar product or service make reasonable gains by engaging in a collaborative activity that better positions both in a highly competitive field?’
While this way of thinking is slow to take hold, the need for it is influenced by factors that have dictated an accelerated process for keeping up with the competition. Given the scarcity of resources, the expanding global marketplace, the ease of duplication of services, substitutes of products and technology leveling the playing field, the tall competitive shadow that once covered a market has been punctured by numerous players carving out their own niche. A change of thinking is required.
When two tier one automotive suppliers, both on the brink of bankruptcy, are struggling to meet the ongoing demands of its client company, their survival may not reside with who can out compete the other, but how can both provide what’s needed in a way that allows both to stay in business. The trick is in finding an overlapping area (i.e. engine design) in which both can share resources that allow both companies to reestablish a niche in the market. The thought process is being explored by a few tier one companies looking for viable ways to stay productive and profitable in Michigan.
In a tight housing market, a few mortgage lending companies, unable to singularly compete against the established giants, have taken to having conversations about some of the ways in which they can share resources and still provide quality and expedient service to clients in a collaborative manner. While their legal staffs help them wrestle with the long term ramifications, their ‘cross-agency collaborative teams’ are searching for the areas of overlap that will help both companies remain competitive in the marketplace.
In a highly competitive higher education market, the Greater Detroit Graduate Consortium is a group of 22 colleges and universities that work together to coordinate educational fairs at local organizations. In identifying areas of overlap, the Consortium realized that they all shared the same mission of helping their partner corporations meet their educational goals. Their area of collaboration is in helping to promote continuing education to employees by providing information on several different institutions available at one place at a time. This collaboration makes it easier for a company to coordinate an onsite education fair by visiting their website at www.detroitgraduateconsotium.org.
When two hospital systems find that they have the combined resources to provide a certain element of patient care without taking away from either of their missions, they strategically moved toward making sure the primary care of the patient was being addressed in a way that allowed for a higher standard of quality while becoming more efficient in their patient response. They would not have known what was possible had they not realized that collaboration was an available choice in a competitive arena.
The ‘spirit of collaboration’ in a competitive marketplace sounds counter intuitive to basic business, but the idea of global competition was never seen as a factor for consideration until its presence started to eat away at the foundation of many tried and true business practices. Laughing and pointing a finger at a struggling competitor was a lot of fun when the globe was larger, but as the globe shrank, the competition became bigger and numerous. What resulted from the spirit of the new competition is no laughing matter.

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Related Forum Posts
Is collaboration useful? - Recently in Japan it is popular that a big company is in the collaboration with other companies in different sectors. For entrepreneurs is collaboration useful? Is collaboration common in North America?
Synergy and Other Creative Insights - Truth is that there is [u:2iwgooi1]C[/u:2iwgooi1]ollaboration - on a formal basis and [u:2iwgooi1]c[/u:2iwgooi1]ollaboration which is informal. Let's say that you have a great new product. Before it launches you get loads of buddies in the same business as you to tear it apart and let you refine it. Creative people will get others in as well. people from outside the business - or those who are in the business who might not have anything to do with it and seek their input - listening hard. These aren't focus groups, they are way beyond this - they are real outsiders and thus have very open minds, asking the dumb, the stupid questions, which are often the most valuable. Questions like these help me be a good coach too! I once worked in a business where the backshop (the store room) was always untidy. They held a team meeting and had the cook in as well (you know the one who ran the employee facility). She knew nothing about the storeroom and its processes, but boy did she ask some tricky questions of them. Sometimes, little 'c' collaboration is real good at the mocro level, without which the big 'C' collaboration would be worthless.
Re: Blog Marketing - I think that effective blog marketing requires a commitment in time, ideas and collaboration.
Looking for Business associates in "Online Tutoring" - Hello all, I am from Sri lanka. I have my own online tutoring business, providing one-to-one, online, live and interactive tutoring for the UK's most competitive accountancy exams, ACCA and CIMA. This is the first and only of its kind tutoring services for ACCA and CIMA, which allows students to have two-way voice communication & online collaboration with the tutor, in real-time. The distinct advantage of South-Asia based online tutoring services is, we have highly qualified English speaking tutors and we can provide the same quality tutoring available in the UK "at approximately 1/3rd of the price" charged in the UK. This is NOT because of any sub-standard tutors, but, since the living costs are lower here in South-Asian countries, we could be able to do this. As you may be aware, most of the operations are outsourced these days to low-cost countries, education too is outsourced. So far, we have coached a number of UK & Ireland based students who were previously unsuccessful with other tuition providers. We also have a steady word-of-mouth recommendation by our past and present students. By taking the advantage that, CIMA Sri lanka chapter being the second largest in the world in terms of students, only being next to the UK (CIMA and ACCA, although UK qualifications, are studied in around 150 countries world wide!), we could be able to source high quality tutors for the job, while at a lower price. So far we only had online presence, by advertising in free classified sites such as Craigslist, Gumtree etc and running FaceBook advertisement campaigns. However, based on the current student feedback and their word of mouth recommendations, I would like to have a business partnership with a firm in the West, to expand the operations. Also, I have decided to launch the same style cut-price, one-to-one, online tutoring for the school students which is a larger segment than ACCA and CIMA. Thus, please be kind enough to advice me as to how I could be able to proceed further by having contacts with a potential business partner/associate. Specially, rather than investing, it is very important that the associate has good contacts, for example, to provide Math and Science tutoring to school students mean, we have to have a good relationship with at least 3-5 schools, teachers and of course parents to promote the programme. Online tutoring delivered from South-Asia is growing at a rapid rate (150% p.a) and it is said this is an excellent and sound industry to venture in. For school markets, I would like business associates from anywhere in the world such as the US, the UK & Europe (English speaking countries), Canada, Australia etc. However, for promoting ACCA and CIMA courses, it is better the business associate based in the UK, as most number of students are from the UK. If you have any thing special for the proposal, please feel free to inbox me. Thank you for your understanding and time. Best Regards and Lots Of Luck !


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