Collaboration is very easy to talk about. It’s on everyone’s lips.
Making collaboration work beyond the handshake – particularly across fields and fiefdoms – is much tougher, requiring a fine balance of skill, respect, neutrality and, underlying it all, trust.
As a start-up with an ambitious mandate – building global companies from Canadian innovation – MaRS has certainly worked collaboratively to bring talented, committed people from different spheres together through inventive on-site programming, expanding and leveraging professional and personal networks, and fostering an active online community at marsdd.com that now draws in excess of 400,000 page views a month.
This fall, MaRS will explore a new collaboration, partnering with the Kingbridge Centre, an innovative conference venue and multifaceted communication facility just north of Toronto that is owned by John Abele, Founder Chairman of Boston Scientific Corporation. Offering a wide variety of programs, resources and technologies, Kingbridge is focused on the discipline of better conferencing – for education, problem solving, strategic planning, conflict resolution or other meeting tasks where openness and interactivity are essential.
Mr. Abele is passionate about creating opportunities to generate fruitful collaboration – and overcoming the organizational barriers that can often stand in the way. Check out Mr. Abele’s recent blog about collaboration for Boston’s Xconomy.com and watch for news on a MaRS/Kingbridge session this fall.
Linda Quattrin was a newspaper reporter and editor before applying her interest in science as communications director at Robarts Research Institute. A member of the Canadian Science Writers Association, she is responsible for media relations and corporate communications at MaRS.
