17th
5/90: Thoughts on unplanned collaboration
While nursing my cold today, I watched The Pixar Story via Netflix. It is a great documentary about the origins, challenges and triumphs of Pixar, from its founding to its merger with Disney. In the movie, Steve Jobs says that “unplanned collaboration” is what Pixar is all about, describing the rationale for their amazing and expansive building.
“Unplanned collaboration” really resonated with me as a grand challenge of collaboration technology. We’ve understood for some time that informal communication and spontaneous encounters are both important for high-functioning organizations, but the concept of “unplanned collaboration” takes it a step further, highlighting that it’s not just the spark of social contact that is important, but having an infrastructure in place for that spark to catch and build into a creative fire.
Please pardon the spark/fire metaphor. I blame the cold medicine.
