Our lead Social Innovator Joe Wilson reflects on collaboration in the real world- and how it really works.

Collaboration is the latest ‘buzz word’ most commonly found being floated around numerous social sector org’s and in progressively minded funding bodies. It is usually spoken about in high-level hui’s where everyone agrees we should all collaborate more. No doubt about it. Let's collaborate. We should definitely collaborate more…and so it is decided, we will collaborate.

This is often followed up with a strangely long period of business as usual; doing what we always did before, doing our daily mahi working in isolation of each other and left scratching our heads thinking, I wonder when the ‘collaboration’ thing is going to happen.

Collaboration, it turns out, is not as easy to do in real time as it is to talk about in hui’s, write into our policies or include in a funding application to ensure we get the putea we need for our new ‘collaborative kaupapa’...