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

Chapter 7

True Collaboration

A Look into the Future

As we progress through the Innovation Age over the next two decades, the underlying mechanisms of Edison’s true collaboration process will surge as a crucial priority for every organization. In understanding how to shape collaboration capacity, develop new context, establish team coherence, and navigate ever-growing levels of complexity, a premium will be placed on workforce reskilling methods, and the ability to form smart layers.

Organizations that engage true collaboration as a backbone for their innovation, value creation, and hiring activity will remain competitive and nimble in the face of constantly shifting economic forces. In making their way to the trailing edge of the Innovation Age, leaders and employees alike must bring the following factors to the forefront of their thinking:

• As the definition of progress changes with the ascendance of Generation Y, a premium will be placed on collaboration and discovery learning. Gen Y’s attraction to collaborative work environments and discovery learning will continue to hold magnetic power as this crucial cohort comes to dominate the US workforce by 2025. Because Gen Y defines progress as a creative continuum of learning and experimentation rather than reaching specific financial objectives or garnering a particular management title, opportunities to engage in purely task-driven activities will hold less value for this cadre of workers. With the merging of innovation, value creation, ...