Midnight Lunch: The 4 Phases of Team Collaboration Success from Thomas Edison's Lab

Chapter 6

Phase 4

Complexity—Forming Smart Layers and Developing Collective Intelligence

Every 60 seconds, 30 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Within the space of 1 minute, Facebook logs an average of 6 million unique page views. In just 18 months, the Apple iPhone skyrocketed to a record 50 million users, making it one of the most popular digital tools on the planet. In the words of Harun Asad, former chief strategy and innovation officer at Lodestar, navigating the zettabytes of data available to a single individual—let alone a collaboration team—“feels like being hit by an avalanche.”1

Good to Great author Jim Collins, who has long advocated that leaders succeed by “getting the right people in the right seats on the bus,” now believes that organizations must also consider ways to get millions of people on the bus.2 How can we harness true collaboration with millions of people? What does the dizzying scale of the collaboration opportunities afforded by smart devices and virtual technologies mean for your team?

In Phases 1 and 2, focus has been placed on helping you optimize the structure of your small team and its creative problem-solving capabilities. Phase 3 advanced the importance of skills such as driving inspiration, navigating conflict, and communicating progress around your team’s efforts with internal and external partners.

But in Phase 4, it’s now crucial to understand how your team can bring speed and scale to bear in its work. Given that the Innovation Age will ...