by Mark Friedman, Alessandro Di Fiore | Publisher: Harvard Business Review | Release Date: May 2015 | ISBN: 4232205460001

One of the most frequently used terms in business today is “collaboration.” Leaders are working to break silos by fostering greater internal collaboration across functions and departments. Executives in both B2C and B2B companies are also focused on collaborating externally—with customers and partners—to “co-create” new products and solutions. It sounds good, coming together with different perspectives and areas of expertise to collectively devise better ways of doing things. However, collaborations, particularly in the B2B space, often fall short. Despite high expectations and significant investments of time and resources, collaborations often fail to yield their intended results, at times producing frustration and hurting important relationships. Alessandro Di Fiore and Mark Friedman of ECSI have found that the barrier to collaboration success is often in how collaborative efforts are structured: the parties fail to agree on the specific problem to be solved. Without this agreement, collaborators spin their wheels. In this interactive Harvard Business Review video webinar, Di Fiore and Friedman share insights on why collaborations fail and how collaborators can achieve alignment in solving critical business problems.

1. You Can’t Collaborate Unless You Agree on the Problem 1:00:44