Jan 20, 2007 10:43 pm US/Pacific
Collaboration Book Features Bay Area Companies
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―
When DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted to enhance collaboration in his globally-dispersed company, he realized he needed to eliminate the distance barrier.
So, with help from HP, DreamWorks developed Virtual Studio Collaboration (VSC), an environment that makes visual effects artists at its division in Redwood City feel as if they are sitting across the table from their colleagues in southern California or on another continent. They can create animation together and virtually look each other in the eye.
DreamWorks Animation is one of two Bay Area visual effects companies featured in a new business book called The Culture of Collaboration: Maximizing Time, Talent and Tools to Create Value in the Global Economy by Evan Rosen.
The other company is Industrial Light & Magic of San Francisco. The book also features the Myelin Repair Foundation of Saratoga, which is promoting collaboration to develop a cure for multiple sclerosis.
The book, published by Red Ape Publishing of San Francisco, describes how collaborative culture is changing business models and the nature of work.
"Collaboration allows better, faster decisions by bringing all stakeholders together in real time. This significant shift is also bringing new efficiencies to product and service development and manufacturing." said Rosen, a San Francisco-based collaboration and communication strategist. "For many leading companies, collaboration is a priority."
The Culture of Collaboration explains how to create a workplace environment conducive to collaboration, how to eliminate "silos" among departments, sharing vs. hoarding information, the trend towards real-time collaboration, how leaders can instill a culture of collaboration, and how to fit collaboration into work styles.
The book includes companies in multiple industries that are creating value through collaboration.
According to the book, the Myelin Repair Foundation is slashing time-to-a-cure for multiple sclerosis by encouraging collaboration among scientists at Stanford and four other universities.
Since scientists often compete for limited grant money and for publishing articles in medical journals, they are slow to share data. This competition has frustrated founder Scott Johnson.
"To solve any significant medical problem, you need experts in several different fields working together as a team," the book quotes Johnson as saying.
The foundation has implemented a collaborative research model that rewards scientists for working together to achieve a common goal. That goal is to enter clinical trials in less than five years as compared with nearly twenty years without collaboration.
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