Collaboration has to be engineered.

technique — attributed to Nicola Kastner

Collaboration does not happen because people are in the same room. It happens because the environment was deliberately designed to produce it. Left to default, people stay in their lanes, talk to who they know, and leave with the relationships they arrived with. The design decisions, seating, formats, sequencing, prompts, are what overcome that default.

Applies to any program whose stated goal is cross-functional or cross-organizational movement.

collaboration, room-design, program-design, participation