Collaborate to Create Community

Everyone talks about collaboration. Public and private organizations, communities, social groups, and families dream of working together in harmony. But a massive chasm too often separates collaborative talk and action.

We believe the reason collaboration is so difficult is that people pay attention to only one or two of the three conditions that are necessary to shape patterns of collaboration in human systems. People need something that holds them together. They need significant differences that bring energy into the engagement. Finally, they need useful ways to engage with each other in co-creative work. A focus on only one of these—purpose or interests or dialogue—does not build the scaffold that is required for productive and sustainable collaboration.