Create, Educate, and Collaborate
Collaboration science is the study of individual, group, organizational, and societal factors affecting groups of people working together toward a shared goal. Teams only create value when they achieve more as a group than individual members would have achieved on their own. Collaboration is essential for all types of organizations (e.g., business, government, education and non-profit) because the problems facing most organizations are of such complexity that no individual has all the relevant information, knowledge or resources to solve such problems alone.
The University of Nebraska at Omaha recognizes that collaboration is sufficiently complex that it requires the application of knowledge across many different academic disciplines. In other words, there is no single discipline that provides all the required knowledge, theory, methods, and techniques necessary for understanding collaboration. Successful collaboration requires the optimal alignment of people, process, information, technology, facilitation, and leadership.
Researchers at the Center study important phenomena such as productivity, creativity, satisfaction, achieving consensus, and implementing effective change-of-practice. They use this knowledge to develop new collaborative work practices for practitioners who are then provided with the capability to utilize the new work practices in their daily work without the ongoing intervention of professional collaboration specialists.