The recent Design Futures Council meeting in New York focused on “collaboration.” Five DFC members agreed to prepare for and facilitate the conversation. The first two tasks were to define the scope of the conversation and set goals for the session “take-aways.” The issues were debated in a conference call and the following guidelines were established:
Scope of the Conversation:
The focus is on the project team. To some members of the DFC that means thinking internally about aspects of collaboration within the firms. For others, it means thinking a bit more broadly to include outside consulting services and arrangements.
It was immediately clear from our discussion about collaboration that the topic was broad and could include the following:
- The project team
- Outside consultants
- Contractors
- Manufacturers
- Suppliers
- Fabricators
- Governmental bodies
- Owners
We felt for there to be valuable information developed it would be important to narrow the definition and to lay ground work that would enable the group to explore a segment of collaboration in depth.
Take-aways:
The objective for each DFC member was to leave the May discussion with two things: first, to enlighten ourselves with good information on collaboration relative to the project team that we could actively apply to our organizations. Second, that this conversation raise provocative questions in the area of collaboration that will feed future DFC agendas worldwide.
Survey Approach
With those two tasks behind us we turned to the information that would be necessary to fuel an information packed, idea-generating conversation. We concluded that we would benefit from surveying DFC members about collaboration. A portion of the following is the result of the survey and the discussion which ensued. As many as four people from each participating firm responded to the survey. The results of the survey, while varied, followed some patterns of consistency highlighting similarities in operations between all of these best-of-class firms. The survey, designed to be brief, consisted of four “free-answer” questions looking at an issue from multiple perspectives. The first set of questions looked at enablers and barriers to collaboration from within the firm and within the industry. The second two questions sought insight based on experiences of firm professionals. The aggregate of the responses was used to generate discussion and serves as the springboard for presentations and case studies outlined in DesignIntelligence.
Chris Trimble, author, Professor at Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, and expert in process innovation joined the discussion for a portion of this meeting, adding a layer of outside expertise that greatly enriched an experienced, thoughtful internal glimpse of professional collaboration. The aim of the discussions and following material is to clearly define a new path to effective collaboration and reap the value that will come with it.
Special thanks is extended to DFC members Clark Davis, Ray Messer, Jack Tanis, Carol Wedge, and Gordy Mills for their leadership of the discussions.
