Good ideas come from collaboration and individual user innovation

November 20, 2008 by RapidDiscovery

JOHANNESBURG – How does one stimulate the building of skills capacity in highly specialised fields, i.e. biotechnology, health science, earth and materials science?

Suza Adam, the founder the [spoiler] Southern African life sciences biopartnering social escience network, offers the following answer: “Collaboration addresses the skills and business development needs of resource poor countries, and can contribute to human skills development, the establishment of new, workable processes and best practice, as well as the adoption of new technology.”

Says Adam: “The power, flexibility, affordability and ease of use of modern online collaboration tools such as widgets and social media lend itself to collaboration in various professional and academic fields. However, it is common purpose that drives group participation.”

“One example of a well-accepted purpose could be to share best practices within an escience community, with the goal of adding 20 new practices to the escience forum’s knowledgebase during the next six months,” states Adam.

“This is explicit, tangible, measurable, and it provides benefits to everyone involved.”

Adam explains that “on complex tasks that require high levels of ingenuity, people are able to do a better job in well-functioning groups, than they can on their own.”

How so?

Collaboration provides direction and motivation, making participants more excited and goal-driven about their research projects or work.

“Improved research outcomes and work excitement are the fruits of the constructive exchange of talent and resources that occurs as a result of cooperation – as well as the emotional nurturing provided by social support.

Good ideas are derived from group participation in escience forums where innovation is fueled by our humanity and inborn curiosity. Participants are typically be more enthusiastic where they feel a sense of belonging and see themselves as part of a community than they will in a workplace in which each person is left to his own devices.

Social forums also serve as test beds, allowing us to test if our ideas will hold water. Academia has relied for centuries on the collective knowledge of peers, publishing their research and observations in refereed journals.

The escience social media forum member relies on the respect of peers and open source IT infrastructure to review the assumptions in his thinking process. You see this scenario play out in the IT software development field on a daily basis with the emergence and growth of self-critical communities as catalyst for innovation.

Communities who crave knowledge, and are learning how to do things better, welcome differing views and input. R&D reviewers often have unique perspectives, and not only provide diversity of opinion, but also group cohesion and problem-solving by asking relevant questions.

The solutions that will emerge from collaborative escience site [spoiler] would have undergone an interdisciplinary scrutiny, and tested for functionality in the human context.

“May people confuse knowledge management and collaboration with one another. Knowledge management is an important aspect of collaboration. Knowledge management is the practice of gathering, creating, and distributing knowledge within an organisation, or in the LIFEsparks context, an escience community.

“Collaboration describes the act of two or more parties which work together toward a common goal. At LIFEsparks, collaboration refers to creating and updating pieces of information, such as a research proposal, set of data, product development idea, process improvement concept or a business / investment proposition.”

Where as knowledge management focuses on creating, gathering and storing information, collaborators create or alter a piece of information. Once the parties have created or updated their documents, then the overall process typically moves into the storage, distribution or knowledge sharing phases.

Not only can participants in the LIFEsparks escience forum create and update collaboratively using collaboration tools integrator Box.net, they can also store their works centrally and securely in online repositories, as well as publish them for others to see and use.

“Knowledge-sharing can empower. Although many South African companies state that knowledge sharing is important to their business culture, in most cases, the opposite is really true. Information hoarding is common, since may people view knowledge as power. In order for science business collaboration to work effectively within a community or company, this barrier needs to be removed by building trust, offering public and private domain access for discussion, emphasizing positive relationships, explaining the mutual benefits of having colleagues share their knowledge, treating all community members fairly and respectfully and making knowledge sharing part of the group’s culture.

Implementing a collaboration strategy involves more than sending out a mass email message. The LIFEsparks biopartnering portal involves a cultural change.

Explains Adam: “People in the community are distributed all along the learning curve in terms of knowledge, experience, new process and technology adoption.

Successful biotechnology entrepreneurs from all over the world with ties to the Southern African life and health sciences industry have responded well to the invitation to collaborate and mentor the regional biotechnology industry. They play an instrumental role in stimulating research and guiding venture capital to the industry.

Students are signing up to form part of the LIFEsparks Fresh group for young scientists, in accessing mentors, internships, employment and opportunities that may lead to business startups.

“The key is to find the motivator that promotes understanding, allowing participants to see the big picture on how collaboration can benefit the greater scientific community, if not their country, and how knowledge sharing really does benefit them on a personal level”, Adam concludes.

More info at [spoiler]

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