GREAT ADAPTATIONS

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Collaboration is a word you should be rolling around in your mouth. Get to know it. Think about what it means. Look for examples of it. Know what it is not. Understand it in relationship to competition. Slap your own definition onto it and wave it around.

Brian Clark and Jon Morrow of Copyblogger just released their “Outsourcing Conspiracy” report. It’s beautiful. Visuals courtesy of James Chartrand and his Men with Pens team (as I understand), this report is a refreshing new band of color in the conversation about entrepreneurship, and a pleasure to read.

Now. About the message. I don’t want to give away their nicely drawn tension, so I won’t reveal exactly what they are presenting and suggesting. But I will say that it’s well worth the short session it takes to read it. I’ll give you the link below.

Entrepreneurs like moi who are riding out the rapids of online communication to build a little empire-of-one’s-own need this kind of straight talk. While “Outsourcing Conspiracy” doesn’t talk about collaboration per se, I know the authors relate to my use of this term. (Right, guys?)

When you are engaging online communication, and you understand enough about it to see the potential for you, your expression, your business and your finances, you’re missing the code if you’re oblivious to the need for collaboration.

What’s this “Collaboration Code” thing? Well, it’s a way of drawing on one of your brain areas where the energy around other “codes” is stored. (Whether you loved or hated daVinci Code, for example, your brain still reserves an area for code-related concepts.) See, words are currency and you need to know the exchange rate. I’m spending my currency to trigger curiosity and engage you.

Naming this “The Collaboration Code” is just a conversation starter. (Like calling the report “The Outsourcing Conspiracy.”) Most of us, even when we’re deep into it, don’t quite get what collaboration means today. Here are a few little keys that unlock the big door. They’re meant to juice up the conversation, so please talk.

>>>See Collaboration as a mind-set. Turn your brain towards the full range of potential relationships involving collaboration.

>>>See Collaboration as sharing ideas. The web, the zillions of blogs, the crush of social media chatter, all of that. Collaborative. Albeit currently unused except for a tiny fraction of a percent of the players who are in it up to their elbows.

>>>See Collaboration as an arrangement with another or a few others helping achieve a common goal.

>>>See Collaboration as the engine behind many more people becoming successful entrepreneurs.

>>>See Collaboration as a playground. You come bounce around with others and see what you can discover.

Toss the code over the fence, we don’t need it. We just need to keep playing.

Now talk. Collaborate with me, with us. Go ahead, write a comment, be playful, and tell me what you’d like to work on together. Be childlike and unreserved in your vision of what we can do together.

Suzanna Stinnett

Brain-Friendly Guides to Online Content

READ The Outsourcing Conspiracy