A Repeatable ECollaboration Process Based on Thin

Authors: Johanna Bragge Hilkka MerisaloRantanen Antti Nurmi Leena Tanner

Publish Date: 2006/10/31

Volume: 16, Issue: 4, Pages: 363-379

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Abstract

In recent years multiorganizational collaboration has become more and more important in both business and research We conducted an action research AR intervention with a consortium of Finnish universities that needed to revise its joint strategy We designed and facilitated a repeatable collaboration process for this multiorganizational strategy development The process was built using the Collaboration Engineering CE approach with thinkLets which provides expertlevel advice for novice facilitators and it was powered by Group Support Systems GSS Our overall impression of CE’s ability to provide valuable design and facilitation support for complex processes is very affirmative The consortium was satisfied with the intervention as it saved huge amounts of time compared with conventional strategic work The process was also seen as more democratic because the GSS tools enabled equal participation during the session Our study also provides a readytoapply CE process recipe to organizations for revising their strategy Through this recipe supplemented with knowledge on thinkLets the strategy development process may easily be repeated by other facilitators or even practitionersThe authors thank the two anonymous referees for their comments on improving this paper This research was supported in part by the Marcus Wallenberg’s Foundation for Business Research the HSE Foundation and the Finnish Foundation for Economic and Technology Sciences

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