"Thriving in an Era of Rabid Collaboration"

This lecture was given at UC Berkley. Brad Wheeler, CIO and VP of Information Technology at Indiana University, talks about some of the efforts that are made to help enable collaboration, and what collaboration is. Collaboration is "an unnatural act." Given the choice, people would rather work on their own than to be dependent on other people.

"Collaboration means co-laboring." Co-laboring means working together with each other. It is important to note that collaboration is different from cooperation:

"Collaboration is not the same as cooperation. Collaboration requires alignment around a common goal. Collaboration is about doing something together. Collaboration only lasts as long as the alignment around common purpose exists."
-James Hilton, U. of Virginia

There are barriers to collaboration, primarily in the factors of cost. As the value or cost of a project increases a phenomenon called "slope of retreat" occurs. This means that when high value is placed on a project, failure can become very devastating. When faced with greater possible failure, benefactors would rather retreat. This is akin to the concept of "risk" in Finance.

Why should companies and collaborate then? What about the universities that wish to fund research projects? The answer to these questions is simple: The payoff can be greater than the risk involved. Even if there are setbacks, you will still end up better off than you were to begin with.

The increasing use of open source software plays a key role in collaboration. When companies and universities use open source software they can cut their costs dramatically. In the video, Brad Wheeler said, "This is not anti-commercial." It's a more cost effective way of accomplishing objectives.

Collaboration gives a competitive edge to companies that seek it out and use it efficiently. IT governance plays a key role in that aspect. Organizations must decide how to run their IT departments, as it will ultimately determine how "well-oiled" their "machine" is.

Cloud computing can help universities with certain Information Technology needs. Topics discussed in the video at [1:08:43] include: Commercial Sourcing, Institutional Sourcing, and Consortium Sourcing.