Waving a Collaborative Flag

With the announcement of Wave, an upcoming product from Google, comes an advance in the way commercial business, associations, nonprofits and individuals collaborate online.   

Although collaboration just got cooler with Google's announcement, it is not the technological advance that makes it worthwhile.  As Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, say in their best-selling book, Wikinomics, collaboration is becoming an economic necessity.  Rather than relying on a team limited by their own creativity -- however impressive, savvy organizations are using wikis, Facebook and soon Google Wave to tap the capabilities of subtantially larger teams which may include an inexhaustible supply of outsiders endowed with an evermore diverse collection of ideas and innovations.

Much has been written recently about the ability of crowds to draw useful conclusions and solve problems collaboratively.  The wisdom of crowds has been used to tackle a wide range of questions from the causes of the US Space Shuttle disaster in 1987 to the nature of pandemics.  Organizations are, more and more, are turning for help to outsiders to build organizational capacity.  Apart from the potential to find better solutions more easily, the cost savings of crowdsourcing can be substantial. 

So, what does collaboration look like these days?  We see simple forms of it in blog comments, single question surveys and social bookmarking -- often executed in an informal, tactical way.  Yet collaborative crowdsourcing initiatives can be more directed and  powerful when built upon a strategic approach.  For example, Facebook, oft cited as a primier example of a social network,  has created a platform that outsiders may use for creating software applications, and in the process has infused its product with many new features at little or no cost -- courtesy of the crowd.

Associations, nonprofits and community groups have long tapped into the labor of volunteers to achieve their goals while minimizing costs. How might new technology tools be used to take volunteerism to the next level? Perhaps we could work together and write a Wiki-based book together that explores the possibilities!