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of shared creation that involves mutual engagement
of participants to solve a problem together and im-
plies sharing risks, resources, responsibilities, and re-
wards. Sharing risks, resources, responsibilities, and
rewards can also give the group to an outside observer
the image of a joint identity.
This approach implies that collaboration is more
than what will later see that is identified as coopera-
tion by adding joint identity and novelty to the goal.
Michael Schrange in his Shared Minds (Schrage,
1990) focuses especially on this noveltyof the group’s
goal. Schrange considers collaborationas a process of
shared creation: two or more individuals with com-
plementary skills interacting to create a shared under-
standing that none had previously possessed or could
have come to on their own.
Collaboration is often confused with coopera-
tion. Because for many people the two terms are in-
distinguishable (Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh,
2008), in the following we will take a closer look at
what collaboration is and how can it be attained. One
general accepted model that describes what is collab-
oration and what are its main components is the 3C
Collaboration Model (Camarinha-Matos and Afsar-
manesh, 2008). This model states that collaboration
is attainable by implementing three main processes:
communication (networking), coordination and coop-
eration.
Communication (Fuks et al., 2008) is the starting
process in each collaborative process. It is a general
belief that efficient or so to say “ideal” communi-
cation will provide better common understanding or
agreement but when people communicate accurately
they realize more precisely the differences that exist
on their perspectives of the concepts in use (Denise,
1999). Different types of agreement tend to mask the
differences in perception that accurate communica-
tion would uncover.
The second process required by the 3C model
is coordination. Coordination refers to (Fuks et al.,
2008) the management of people, their activities and
resources. Coordination allows team members to
manage conflicts and activities in order to increase the
efficiency of communication and cooperation efforts.
Networking or communication is used as a founda-
tion (Wolff, 2005) but involves also altering activities
for mutual benefit and for a common goal. It also
increases resource usage efficiency and the ability to
meet the targets.
Cooperation refers to the interaction among group
members in order to produce, manipulate, and orga-
nize information, or build and refine cooperation ob-
jects like documents, spreadsheets etc. (Fuks et al.,
2008) This process requires a shared workspace that
should provide the required tool in order to manage
these artifacts, tools like version and access control
and authorization. The shared workspace is very im-
portant because it allows group members to count on
group memory and it provides also some basic aware-
ness mechanisms.
Cooperation, coordination and collaboration are
often used interchangeably, but they should be de-
scribing different stages in the transformation of the
relationship between groups and organizations (Os-
her, 2002). The backbone of collaboration is not the
process of relationship but the strict following of a
specific result (Denise, 1999).
2.2 Creativity
The rationality behind collaboration is creativity. Cre-
ativity, and especially scientific creativity, is a process
of achieving an outcome that is recognized as innova-
tive by the relevant community. As defined by Csik-
szentmihalyi in (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997), this pro-
cess does not happen inside one person’s head, but
in the interaction between that person’s thoughts and
a socio-cultural context.
Creativity can refer to the work of artists, but can
also refer to everyday problem-solving abilities. This
type of creativity is essentially equally important be-
cause enables people to become more productive and
create better results. Farooq (Farooq et al., 2005)
identified as essential requirements for creativity the
followings:
1. support divergent and convergent thinking;
2. support development of shared objectives;
3. support reflexivity: obtaining immediate feedback
is essential in having complete involvement in the
task at hand (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). In the con-
text of a group this refers to the extent to which
members collectively reflect on the group’s objec-
tives. This process is known as reflexivity and
consists of three elements: reflection, planning
and action or adaptation.
Reflection is based on critical thinking because it
implies evaluating what divergent thinking offers, fil-
ters it using acceptability criteria and selects the ideas
that will be further taken in consideration. Planning
creates conceptual readiness for relevant opportuni-
ties and guides group member’ attention towards ac-
tions and means to accomplish goals. In order to pro-
vide support for this issue, tools from project man-
agement must be implemented. Action or adaptation
refers to the continuously renegotiation of group’s re-
ality during interaction between group members, and
members and environment. Adaptation consists in
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