Soda - Keeping Curious

In collaborative heaven people get involved because they find their particular project stimulating, energising and downright exciting. See, not once (in what is admittedly one short sentence) have I mentioned the word money. People don’t collaborate because it pays well. Actually that’s not true either. People collaborate for all sorts of reasons and with all sorts of underlying aims, however, the point is, they see a point in collaborating. That by collaborating they can achieve a much better outcome, for themself, for their group, for their organisation and quite possibly for mankind in general.

Working on the principle of a ‘better’ outcome could also result in the accumulation of huge amounts of capital, Social Capital. This potent form of global currency is worth accumulating, and people’s future wealth may well depend on how much social capital they’ve managed to make come their way; as will the company they work for and the projects they choose to devote time to.

Collaboration and social capital might not yet be firmly linked in people minds, but there’s growing evidence to suggest that the Net Generation are well aware of the latter, having leveraged it’s importance by intrinsically believing in the former.

So next time you have one of those ‘Every man for himself moments’, pause for a second, and if it doesn’t feel too much of a Monty Python-moment think ‘Wait a minute, I have high net worth when it comes to social capital, I can collaborate myself out of this mess!’

Go on, get your invitation engine revving on Linkedin, launch your blog and get collaborating on boundaryless project that have a worthwhile outcome. Because remember, you’re never need be alone again if you collaborate.

Within Together the mass collaboration team are on a roll. Whilst I’ve been busy getting out there and spreading the message whilst Nat, Nick and the rest of the team are in infrastructure mode, developing the web presence and the overall creative approach that underpins our spin on the mass collaboration story. We refer to mass collaboration as ‘Big Page Thinking’ , a nifty concept thought up by the team, that challenges you with the intriguing question, ‘How many ideas can you fit on a piece of paper? Well we’d say, “Depends on how big the piece of paper is.”

We’re bringing the ‘Big Page Thinking’ idea to life by producing a poster illustrating hundreds of ideas that have come straight-out of the teams’ notebooks. As these ideas literally unfold from a piece of A4 paper to reveal a huge A1-sized poster, we instantly ‘get’ the awe-inspiring implications of involving collective intelligence in developing fresh, innovative ideas.
This work is really bringing the team together and is sparking off fresh ideas on how to carry ‘Big Page Thinking’ out into the brand-world. Individuals have moved from an initial defensive position, that seemed to ask the question, ‘Isn’t that my job to provide clients with new ideas? , to one of “Hey, isn’t it now my task to try and facilitate a new mode of creativity, that, whilst a little scary, is actually an exciting journey into unknown, fertile territory”.

Here’s to ‘Big Page Thinking’ and beyond