Power of Collaboration

I wrote about this a while back as one of the Habits of Innovative People. In recent months, I got some more taste of it so I think I shall share that too.

Most innovative people have a trait of laziness. That motivates or rather makes them innovate for the solutions of the repetitive tasks. But is sometimes also drives for collaboration. They have the ideas but are bit lazy (not enough motivated) to implement it. There is they find an energetic mind, which is willing to follow and learn from them, creates a wonderful collaboration opportunity. Am sure all PhD students can see an analogy here. So the point here is that if you are a innovative person with ideas but without time/energy/motivation to implement it, try find someone who would do it for you. They are not difficult to find if you look in right places. College students and early career professional are generally ideal fit here.

However, if you are on the other side; that is, you are the young energetic mind. Then try to collaborate with someone who has the idea but not the time. You don't get used for free. You get a huge learning opportunity. And an experience which will take longer if you go alone.

I have noticed trust is often the issue between these two parties. Young want to piggy-back and experience doesn't want to give a free ride. Perhaps the same old debate about the value of an idea. When I faced the situation, I just asked myself, what I value more - the idea or the implementation. If I feel the idea is worth big, then I do not share and use that to motivate myself to go about it alone. However, if the idea is of not big personally value for me,  I either share or give it away. Or try to 'collaborate' to have it implemented. That keeps the 'joy of creation' factor alive.

In that previous post I mentioned that solving a complex problem is generally not the need for collaboration. I don't deny that complex problem are better dealt with when a group of expert minds work on them. What I mean to say is that you don't need to collaborate only for complex problems. You may do i for smaller (lame) ones too.

This also touches the Mentor-Mentee relationship but that is more than collaboration. We shall discuss that in next post perhaps.