Collaborative Innovation is a powerful organizational practice that utilizes collaboration to produce breakthrough Innovation. Since it is dependent on a foundation of genuine collaboration, the first step in achieving Collaborative Innovation is to create an organizational culture of committed collaboration.

Most organizations are not built to be collaborative and even those that are must work very hard to maintain that culture. Many start-up businesses are based on the collaboration of their founders but, if successful, become bigger, more complex and less collaborative. As they become even larger, attention is turned to maintaining or growing the business and collaboration is reduced by layered management, bureaucracy and even competition. If Collaborative Innovation is to be achieved, the leaders, managers and workforce must work very hard to keep the culture collaborative.

This is generally very challenging and requires constant leadership attention and unswerving commitment by management to maintain the collaborative culture. Strategies, infrastructure, processes and practices must all be aligned to a collaborative culture or it will falter. Even more challenging is a change of culture from bureaucratic, adhocratic and competitive to collaborative, but it must be done if breakthrough innovation is to occur.

Collaboration depends on many things but there are six principles that are usually practiced and honored in most collaborative organizations. The first is integrity, a belief that everyone can be trusted to speak the truth. The second is respect, an agreement by everyone to honor each other’s opinion even when it differs from their own. The third is mutuality, an atmosphere of genuine caring for each other. The fourth is curiosity, truly wanting to know as much as possible in any circumstance. The fifth is adaptability, everyone being willing to understand and adjust to the realities of changing situations. And lastly and sixth, a commitment by the culture to assess and support the energy of each other and the whole.

If an organization can either remain or become collaborative under the most challenging, complex and critical circumstances, it will be able to meet these challenges and problems with powerful possibilities, solutions and opportunities through Collaborative Innovation. If an organization is collaborative, innovation will be the norm.