Collaborating by Design

“Collaborate or die” says this ET column dated 2 June 2010. According to Mr. Suresh Nair, Director, Global Strategic Planning, Grey Group: “……Right now, we have an opportunity to make advertising all about ideas, integrate processes, and make planners, creative and servicing all accountable for the idea. It is the age of the C word—collaboration. We can’t pay lip service to that. Collaborate or die! It’s that kind of a world right now. Because you can’t crack a problem by yourself locked up in a room. The agency business is uniquely creative, slightly weird and lateral thinkers come here in every department. So, why aren’t we doing even more to tap that collectively brainpower? But as an industry, we believe in the cult of the personality so much that we forget some of the fundamentals.” [Click here for the full interview]

Talking of collaborative ties, we (in the academic world) have been receiving visitors from Europe and America quite regularly. Here is one interesting anecdotal experience with one such visitor. The person happened to be from USA and was under a short visiting program facilitated by USEFI. His talk was good - revolving round global collaborative models using Web2.0. Yet, after the talk, when we got down to a reality check I could see his limitation in strengthening local collaborative capabilities (around his own Institution). This was indirectly weakening his global initiatives. I could also see him being a hapless entity in the turbulence created around him through the winds of globalization sweeping over his state under the global diktats of some unseen “Universal strategic intent”. Perhaps we all are similar entities under such powerful forces. Closer home we find umpteen cases having similar characteristics. We want to go for global (read distant) collaborations by downgrading the local (read neighborhood) ties. As a result we see unhealthy competition between and within Institutes. The attached document (titled “story of strong areas and weak areas”) could well be the story of most Indian B-Schools as they continue to fail in “Collaborating by Design”.

At the same time, however, there is hope for a brighter future. It is quite interesting to see “The University Design Industry Partnership Scheme” taking off in UK. Their aim is “Profit through Collaboration, not Competition”. Initiated by the British Design Innovation (BDI) here are some excerpts from a news clip:

“….The BDI mantra is that no product, service, process or proposition ever comes to market without the knowledge and skills of several expert parties. With that precept firmly in mind, in February BDI and the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) co-hosted Propositions into Profit through Collaboration, not Competition, the first national conference of its kind attended by 37 universities and 30 directors of leading strategic design companies. What transpired was a mutual realisation that they share different but complementary experience, expertise, skills and values.”

“….UDIPS aims to reinforce the value industrial and service designers can bring to discovery-led university research results by acting as a bridge between the technology and consumer-focused market applications.”

“…It is recognised that the design and higher education sectors need to re-discover one another, because the innovation landscape is changing and its boundaries are becoming ever more blurred. It is no longer possible to simply describe universities as being ‘about research’ and industry being ‘about innovation’. Research, innovation, R&D and knowledge transfer are no longer exclusive to any single sector, if they ever were.”….[Click here to read on]

Unfortunately, India has other challenges (read this article by Francois Gautier) that prevent active collaborations. Nevertheless it is time we “collaborated by design” to handle the several inclusive growth challenges because "There is no such thing as a free lunch".

Related links:
Year of Creativity and Indian Education
Academic freedom with a reason
Intelligent cause for academic freedom
There is no such thing as a free lunch