How teaming supercharges collaboration

IN THE complex, uncertain and fast-changing world we live in, success and even survival require intensive collaboration among individuals, organisations and countries. The outcomes of such collaboration can be breathtaking – consider the growth of Netflix and Amazon, the rebirth of Microsoft and General Motors, the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Yet, most people and organisations fail to collaborate, preferring competition to cooperation. In business, up to 70 per cent of strategic alliances fail and more than half of joint ventures do not survive their 10th anniversary.

Why collaboration stumbles

There are good reasons that collaborations often falter: physical distance, time zone differences and unequal access to information, to name a few. However, the biggest obstacles are psychological.