The beauty of collaboration

We've all heard of 'collaboration', the current buzzword for teamwork, and a word which stirs visions [in my mind, at least] of exciting partnerships and collective brainpower which unleashes countless volumes of great ideas... and more importantly significant action [through accountability]. You can read more about my thoughts on 'collaborative business model engineering', which explains a bit of where I believe this, combined with free sharing of information, can lead to.

Well, I've always been a big believer in team - that there's more power in you and me, than there is just in me.

But it's only recently that I've realised how incredibly important it is to 'see' mind-to-mind with someone. You can be surrounded by interesting people with a variety of skills all day and yet never be truly challenged within yourself. Don't get me wrong, I think there is GREAT value in all the people that I am surrounded by, and its always invigorating to learn from family, friends and colleagues. But when you can find someone like-minded who shares similar perspectives... it's absolutely awesome to be stretching the limits of my own imagination [in a good way] due to the positive influence of such a person, rather than being stretched [in a bad way] by people with little regard for my abilities, weaknesses and with very little regard for my own well-being or aspirations at all.

The thing is, as wonderful as collaboration is, if you don't find the right people to collaborate with, you'll probably just end up highly frustrated, more confused and certainly doubtful of any ability you [and they] may have to really impact on society in any meaningful way.

For me, conversations I've had over the past few weeks have brought new insight, challenged existing preconceptions and - on the whole, taken me to a new level of thinking. And amongst the madness of day-to-day living, where lifting your sights to see bigger things is difficult at best, its so refreshing.

Sure, most of the challenging thoughts and ideas are inherently long-term, but that to me is the best part - because long-term benefits are almost always much more valuable than short-term ones.

So I'm looking forward to more mind-bending conversations, perhaps a collaboration that can rock the status-quo a bit... and who knows what we could build from there! The possibilities are just stunning!

To the idea magician who has challenged me in this way - THANK YOU! And see ya later, innovator!