The 7 co-levels of interaction
The 7 co-levels of interaction

Food for thought

The 7 co-levels of interaction
Författare: Bengt Järrehult

Earlier in a Food for Thought, I described the difference between Collaboration and Cooperation. Confusingly enough they both have the prefix “Co-” and the suffix “-tion”. I would like to dwell on this confusion adding 5 more “Co-tions” to get the whole picture on what I call the 7 Co-levels of interaction… (again, the magic number of 7….)

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Cognition: It all starts with the awareness that there is somebody out there that you could benefit from. In Open Innovation terms it would be the insight that there are other people out there that have complementary skills to yours. You say “I think I found somebody out there”

Connection: After finding and identifying the partner to liaise with, you have a dating problem ahead of you. How to connect to the other one. Today, in our interconnected world, this is relatively easy. You do it either via the web in social forums, via email, via telephone or, which we tend to forget the importance of, the physical contact on seminars and conferences.

Communication: After connecting you start to communicate. Usually you stake what you are after and what you are intending to do. You have to open up first in order to get the other party interested. Anyway, it was you who started the conversation, right?! (Hey…here we’ve got another “Co-tion”, but this is one too many (>7) and almost the same as communication anyway, so we don’t count it in).

Coordination: After telling the other what you intend to do very briefly, you may indicate more precisely how you’re going to do it. Of course, this is opening up your intensions rather much, be careful to balance your information with what you are allowed to say. This may be the phase where you start to think of confidentiality. The basic rule is: give away 5 % information – get 5 % back. If you do not feel this reciprocity – stop talking. Then the other party is just having selfish reasons for the ongoing conversation. But if you feel the confidence is there, formalize it into an NDA. (NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement).

Cooperation: You start to cooperate usually because both parties realize that there is an efficiency increase ahead if you would pool your resources. You do not yet have a common goal, but you may have two disparate goals with a common denominator that you can share. This is where you form a formal cooperation agreement which is a much bigger and complex thing than a simple NDA. It states what you own jointly and what is the ingoing property for each party. It also states what each party is supposed to do. A special case of co-operation is “Co-opetition”, i.e. working together with a competitor in order to trump other, non-co-operating, competitors. The principle of “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” applies here as well. Done well, this is beneficial. Not done well, this might lead to a Collision. (…excluded from the Co-tion group due to wrong spelling).

Collaboration: Now you more or less have a J/V (Joint Venture) cooking which demands a J/V agreement. You now share the same goal, which may or may not be the same as your mother company has as main goal. For focus reasons, dedicate resources to this collaboration that are separated from the everyday tasks you normally have.

Co-creation: When/If you are successful, you now have co-created something jointly, an innovation launched onto the market. Something that probably not would have been possible – at least not in the short time frame you have used so far – by doing it on your own.

Interacting with external parties is a step-wise process, here shown in 7 steps. Start finding your own way to initiate it and be aware of the internal assistance you may need from our legal and patent departments along the road.

Bengt Järrehult