Syndicom

Syndicom, the creator of the Web 2.0 case collaboration platforms, SpineConnect.com and ArthoplastyConnect.com, announced a strategic partnership with Bacterin International Inc, an innovative biologic company and manufacturer of elutive bioactive coatings for medical devices. The alliance aims to implement a surgeon-to-surgeon online collaboration strategy for its surgeons to efficiently expedite their understanding of, and case [...]

What are the four things surgeons starting a practice should care about? Well, that’s what Barbara Cataletto and I talked about and more. The podcast (click to play above) contains some rich information and ideas on how Spine Specialists can do more to educate their teams to improve the top and bottom line!
Barbara is the [...]

For a WOWing and critical look into what may be the future of business organization design, check out David Armano’s blog on THE SOCIAL busines.
He starts off the conversation with an idea:
Imagine if a company like GM, was at the core “social”. Not just participating in “social media”—but through every part of their business ecosystem, [...]

YouTube.com has some truly remarkable videos. I just spent a few minutes searching around for some collaborative content and found this one from the Vanderbilt Medical Center’s Discovery Lecture Series. Sir Paul Nurse, Ph.D talks about building collaborative teams and the effectiveness of sharing ideas.

What are your thoughts on scientific collaboration?
1. Is scientific [...]

Case, cases and more cases = orthopedic collaboration. Syndicom.com has done it again. We have launched ArthroplastyConnect.com, a Community of Practice (CoP) for orthopedic surgeons to collaborate on difficult, unique, teaching, novel, research, innovative, design-oriented, clinical, (and more) cases. Already the membership has taken off and so have the collaborations. Hundreds of images, case commentary [...]

Do you have a blogroll? Do you follow collaborative blogs? Who are the experts that you give your attention too? Well, instead of just asking the question, I thought I’d showcase who we are following:
DeviceTalk by MDDI
Relationships and Identity
The Wall Street Journal Health Blog
Drug and Device Law

Healthcare Collaboration Blog
PharmaMarketing Blog
Any others we should be following???

Lately, at Syndicom HQ, we’ve been following an article about developing and enabling collaborative strategies at organizations. You might say that we read all that we can on collaboration; remembering always that it is a learned skill. The piece, by Dr. Carol Kinsey Goman, highlights the many strategies a company might deploy to gain and [...]

Syndicom, the creator of the Web 2.0 case collaboration platforms, SpineConnect.com and ArthoplastyConnect.com, announced a strategic partnership with Amedica Corp., - an orthopedic implants company focused on silicon nitride ceramic technologies. The alliance aims to implement a surgeon-to-surgeon online collaboration

strategy for its surgeons to efficiently expedite their understanding of, and case discussions about the [...]

Do you have a favorite collaborative model? Did you learn somewhere that collaboration must/should follow a set of rules? Where did you first learn those rules/ideas? Lately, during the launch of several new collaborative projects, I’ve continued to go back to one source: The Collaboration Rubric.
Developed as a support mechanism for a scientific study on [...]

Listen to the podcast:

I had the opportunity to talk with Lawrence Sherman (you can follow him on twitter now if you want). A medical education expert who took me through how the internet is changing continuing medical education (CME), who to follow and what trade shows to go to.
As CEO of the Physicians Academy, Lawrence [...]

In the next few weeks, I have a series of podcasts scheduled with experts in CME and how to effectively run your orthopedic practice. Typically, I don’t reach out for input on questions in my podcasts, but I thought: why not?

As a matter of practice it is all about what you think/care about. So, if [...]

Do you know what the difference is? I read an interesting blog post this week from Collaborative Thinking in which the author, clearly defines the difference:
Is a CoP the same thing as a (social) network? There is often some overlap. A network is the collection of connections and relationships between people. Right now, “social networking [...]

Do you know what the difference is? I read an interesting blog post this week from Collaborative Thinking in which the author, clearly defines the difference:
Is a CoP the same thing as a (social) network? There is often some overlap. A network is the collection of connections and relationships between people. Right now, “social networking [...]

Collaborations are often very productive, and important for the learning organization. Collaborators will lend expertise and improve the impact and reach of your organization’s projects and initiatives. However, not all organizations are the same, nor are the collaborations. Launching a collaborative project with the wrong collaborator could damage an organization’s initiatives and projects, and could [...]

Depending upon your vantage point, the topic of health care can be a complex issue, or a question of simple and immediate need. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of separate entities participating in the American health care discourse, all jostling to place their interests as paramount, most representatives of industry.
While it is easy to [...]

Syndicom was nominated for the 2009 Colorado Companies To Watch program earlier this year, and I’m happy to report that we are a FINALIST! We just got the notice in the mail!!!
The Colorado Companies to Watch program energizes the state and it’s communities by recognizing second-stage companies that are developing valuable products and services, creating [...]

There is one very important part of collaboration: taking stock of where you are. Highly productive teams and collaborative networks sometimes need to understand “where they are”. The question is, when to do this?
You might see it on their faces; that’s probably the most obvious time to “take stock”. However, the best practice I’ve experienced [...]

“Design is directed toward human beings. To design is to solve human problems by identifying them and executing the best solution.” Said Ivan Chermayeff, the now famous designer and creator of notable identities as NBC, Mobile oil and PBS. With medical device the same must hold true; as we are all trying to improve patient [...]

Listen to the podcast:

Building on our goal of expanding notions of collaboration and healthcare teams, this week we had the very distinct pleasure of speaking with Scott Capdevielle, CEO of Syndicom to gather some of his thoughts on collaboration, innovation and healthcare. Scott’s expertise and experience with software, collaboration, web 2.0 media and entrepreneurship is [...]

A recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) talks about the instructions “allow natural death” versus “do not resuscitate” and how either of these three words can change a life. Even more, the article underscores a role and voice that is often forgotten in this conversation - the one of nurses.

With a focus on a cooperative [...]

The web these days seems to be full of the talk around EHRs, health IT and the stimulus bill - you can tell by our blog posts that this question over whether more technology is really the cure for an ailing health care system and improving patient care is indeed controversial. There is also a [...]

“These narratives, or pathographies as they are sometimes called, demonstrate how critical is the telling of pain and suffering enabling patients to give voice to what they endure and to frame the illness so as to escape dominion by it.”  -Dr. Rita Charon Narrative Medicine, P. 66
Recently, the editorial, The Computer Will See You Now [...]

There’s been a lot of talk coming out of the health care reform debates around issues of comparative effectiveness assessments for treatments and the high costs associated with particular devices (and therefore health care in general). I was just reminded of this fact yesterday as we received a call from a representative from the hospital [...]

If I am not for me, then who is for me?
If I am just for me, then who am I?
And if not now, then when?
-Jewish koan
I watched the film, The English Surgeon last week, 3 times.
The film follows brain surgeon Dr. Henry Marsh as he openly confronts the dilemmas of the doctor patient relationship [...]

We have recently returned from AAOS (American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons) in Las Vegas. There we connected with others about leading edge technologies and techniques; discussed product development; attended demonstrations and connected with others from around the world. In light of being back, we thought we’d highlight a couple things that may be of interest [...]

Recently, I was in an appointment with my physician and she was cursing about the spell check or lack thereof on her computer. The first time someone has actually ‘presenced’ my EHR in an appointment, and after reading about EHRs and a lot of technology over the last several months, I started to interrogate her [...]

It’s that time again….. Spring time…. and conference time. This week, the Syndicom crew are at the AAOS (American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons) conference in Las Vegas to connect with others about leading edge technologies and techniques; discuss product development; attend demonstrations and collaborate with other companies from around the world. The AAOS annual meeting [...]

“A way of seeing is a way of not seeing.” -Poggi, 1965
Dr. Clay Shirky, an insightful thinker on technology and its effects on business and society recently sat down with Radar and spoke about the effects of low cost coordination and group action as well as where to find the next layer of value [...]

Over a year ago now e-patient Dave finished reading a white paper about the nature and status of the e-patient and its connection to participatory medicine. The white paper offered up several main conclusions — that patients are valuable contributors and providers should recognize them as such; that the art of empowering patients is [...]

“Several weeks ago I started to have sharp pains in my right hip area, descending to the top of my right thigh. It made it difficult to walk without limping. At first I had trouble getting out of bed in the morning because the pain was so great. Over time, the pain has diminished at [...]

Yes, that is right! The team from Syndicom spent some of their time at the Emerging Technologies in Spine Summit, capturing the event in photos, conversation and film for all of you there and those who missed out. It’s a great 5 minutes of conference time and chat introducing community members, presentations and SpineConnect members.

At [...]

“Suffering – whether physical, emotional, spiritual, or as often the case, all three – can be a doorway to transformation. As we move to the end of this century and millennium, our personal suffering is sometimes worsened by the lack of communication and community…Telling stories can be healing. We all have within us access to [...]

Last week we discussed how surgical communities draw in innovators, an insight gleaned from our discussions with Dr Paul Slosar and his own involvements with innovation and mentoring within the Spine Connect community. The Syndicom team have just returned from the Emerging Technologies in Spine Summit where they hosted an afternoon session on Surgeonuity and [...]

Last week, we had a terrific discussion with Dr. Paul Slosar about his involvement with SpineConnect, among other things. He spoke meaningfully about innovation, mentorship, and interdisciplinary interaction as means to enhance patient care. Even more, he suggested spine communities help physicians, administrators, and medical device companies come to a shared vision to serve their [...]

Listen to the podcast:

This week we had the very distinct pleasure of speaking with Paul Slosar, MD of the San Francisco Spine Institute and the Spine Care Group. Paul is a well known and very active Spine Connect user, working in and across multiple and diverse public groups as well as with emerging technologies in [...]

Innovation happens through connection. As such, we are on the road again with an exciting conference schedule!

First, Emerging Technologies in Spine Summit will be held February 4-7 2009 in Steamboat Springs for the Summit’s 5th anniversary! On the first day of the conference, Syndicom is holding a meeting with Surgeon Experts from 1230 to discuss opportunities [...]

As a list maker myself, I applauded the release of the New England Journal’s article this week, and as a patient who has had to endure the redirection of surgeons to my case, I was thankful for it. As we discussed earlier this week though, what is the true effect of this checklist? Some will [...]

There is much talk these days about the recent yearlong study revealing that surgeons following a 19-step checklist in the operating room can reduce the rate of deaths and complications by one-third. But what does the checklist mean for our current understanding of communication and collaboration in the clinic?

The yearlong, eight-nation project lead by Atul Gawande, [...]

What does it mean to be a surgeon? And what does it mean to do surgery?
Do you love being in the operating room? Do you like the art of medicine? Do you like the technical side of medicine? Do you like the challenge of medicine? Do you love helping people, perhaps saving people, through [...]

Yes, it’s that time again — the Emerging Technologies in Spine Summit is being held from February 4-7, 2009 in Steamboat Springs!
It’s the Summit’s 5th anniversary so we hope to see many of you at the Steamboat Grand to discuss the most current thinking and evidence-based medicine in new technologies related to spine care from [...]

“A culture of separation will collapse of its own incoherence. We need communities of memory that experience time as a continuous flow, a shared rhythm.” -Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart
 
Time is precious. And because doctors provide services to one person after another, it can be a grind. You can lose your larger sense of purpose [...]

“What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.” (William Blake, poet).
If I was to ask you what it meant to be a surgeon [...]

As we approach the holiday season, let’s spare a thought for all those to whom our patients are connected. Recently, I called my pediatrician to set up a well child visit for my son to find out he is on leave as he is having back surgery. An older gentleman who suffers from scoliosis, I [...]

Last week, we wrote about the issues of posting, participation and presence in online communities such as SpineConnect. Recently I was commenting on a blog post about crowdsourcing and participatory medicine and raised the question — what is the difference between crowdsourcing and collaboration? I did so, because over the last few months, I had [...]

“to be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?” Hamlet, act 3, scene 1.
When you arrive at an acquaintance’s party where there are a lot of people unfamiliar [...]

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, in his book Weaving the Web, claims that his original vision of the web was one of collaboration. He wanted people to participate in two-way sharing of information and decades after the web was born, web 2.0 is breathing life back into his original vision. Medicine has always [...]

Last month Jane Sarasohn-Kahn posted about how medical technology is the #1 factor driving up health spending in the US according to the Center for Studying Health System Change and their recent report, High and Rising Health Care Costs: Demystifying U.S. Health Care Spending.
It seems that these pieces of hardware used by surgeons in curing, [...]

Earlier this month, Businessweek published a major story on Health 2.0 and the rise of patient power in reforming the way health is practiced. Drawing extensively on their case of Patientslikeme, they discussed how members of the social network had enrolled themselves in their own clinical trial for lithium treatments of ALS, issues surrounding Pharma, [...]

Sensibility: The ability to feel or perceive stimuli; a keen intellectual perception; mental or emotional responsiveness toward something, such as the feelings of another.; receptiveness to impression, whether pleasant or unpleasant; acuteness of feeling; refined awareness and appreciation in matters of feeling; the quality of being affected by changes in the environment.
Last week, I wrote [...]

For some time now, you may have noticed a small announcement on the right side of the SpineConnect community page when you arrived to post or review cases about OneSpine. OneSpine is an organization dedicated to improving spinal health in the developing world. Their goal is to provide access to spine care for a greater [...]

As I wrote earlier on this blog, one of the most liberating facets of web 2.0 technologies is their disruptive influence on the time-space continuum. This facet of their nature, coupled with the need to reach patients where they are, how they are, in remote, rural or just dispersed locations gave birth to the [...]

Listen to the podcast:

This week we were fortunate enough to speak to Gary Ghiselli, MD, moderator of the Young Surgeons Group on SpineConnect. Gary is a board-certified, fellowship-trained spine surgeon specializing in cervical, thoracic and lumbar surgery with a subspecialty interest in complex deformity and degenerative conditions of the cervical spine. He works with Denver [...]

This past weekend, the folks from Syndicom headed to Nevada to attend the annual SMISS (Society for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery) conference and catch up with friends there! Did you know that MIS started to take off about 10 years ago?
The conference involved the usual presentations, networking opportunities, exhibitions and an intensive two-day course demonstrating [...]

I read a lot of health 2.0 related material and recently three things have caught my eye which I think are relevant to changes we may begin to see in healthcare soonish. First, the number of health 2.0 consumers has jumped; second, I wanted to share a recent entrant into this space — icyou – [...]

I have been meaning to catch everyone up on the news this month so this week I have two tidbits to share in the digest…
First up, as you may know, a couple of weeks ago, while on a whirlwind conferencing tour, Walker and Scott jetted out to San Francisco to attend the Health 2.0 conference [...]

Why do people join communities or groups? Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs gives us some clues — there are those pesky survival needs around safety, shelter, food etc but then there are also middle order needs of belonging and esteem as well the most important of all, self actualization. Recently, I conducted a survey of [...]

A recent study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research detailed the requirements and services available for optimizing how scientific collaborations are established on Facebook. Facebook????? Yes, Facebook. You read it right! The researchers found that beyond expertise…..
1. Compatibility in personality, work style, and productivity were essential;
2. Communication was also central in finding the right [...]

In the last blog, we discussed the impact technology has on participatory medicine and ended with the idea that what was lacking to really bring health 2.0 into full force were the networks of networks. Alongside concerns around technology expressed in the end session of the conference, were concerns about people. As Clay Shirky writes [...]

After the successful health 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week, there have been several different “where to next?” discussions across the blogosphere. Accompanying these discussions are articles such as the one in Newsweek recently on web 2.0 and the coming of health 2.0, emphasizing “health as a social concept” and therefore, its commitment [...]

Just as they got back from Toronto, Syndicom’s CEO Scott Capdevielle, and Walker Thompson, VP of Sales and Marketing, went a-roving once more…this time to the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this week. Walker’s been texting and tweeting all day to bring us live news from the conference which is dedicated to innovations in [...]

Hopefully everyone has recovered now from your journeys to and during the annual NASS conference just past in Toronto. During the meeting, NASS recognized three of its members for their extraordinary contributions to the field of spine care. Eugene J. Carragee, MD, of Palo Alto received the Leon Wiltse award for excellence in leadership and [...]

There’s some debate currently around the exact nature of health care reform that we may expect with the “googlization of everything”. According to Manhattan Research this week, a new study of “cybercitizens” shows that more U.S. adults used the Internet than doctors to obtain health and medical information over the past year; a noticeable change [...]

Recently Jane Sarasohn-Kahn over at HealthPopuli posted a blog about a new report on the Medical Device Industry by Ernst and Young, entitled Pulse of the industry: US medical technology report 2008.
The report argues that while the medical technology sector is one of the most innovative within the US economy, it too could suffer at [...]

Camaraderie = from the French, camarade or comrade, circa 1840, meaning a spirit of friendly good-fellowship.
Ah yes, the first years out of school are always the hardest and you find yourself screaming silently ‘they never told me that during my training!’ But in all fairness, they couldn’t because the diversity of the ‘real world’ and [...]

Yes, that’s right…. more news from Syndicom and SpineConnect(TM) about to hit your email inboxes as we prepare for the upcoming NASS conference in Toronto next week (October 14-17)! Hope to see you all there - remember it is booth 1311!
In more news, the COLLABORATIVE CASE OF THE QUARTER was posted by Alpesh Patel and [...]

Susannah Fox, an associate director with the Pew Internet and American Life Project and founder of e-patients.net recently completed a research study focusing on e-patients and estimates that between 75% and 80% of Internet users have looked online for health information. More importantly perhaps, people who have a lot at stake, or who live with [...]

This week Syndicom and Titan Spine announced that they will be working together to implement an online surgeon-to-surgeon collaboration strategy to enhance surgeon understanding and implementation of Titan Spine’s Endoskeleton (R) TA Interbody Fusion Device.
The idea here, Walker Thompson, VP of Sales and Marketing for Syndicom states, “…is to connect experts to surgeons who are [...]

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently released a report on the impact of web 2.0 on what they describe as ‘participatory medicine’. According to the authors of the report, Susannah Fox and Mary Madden, the inroad web 2.0 technologies have made in the health arena as well as their transformative potential will result [...]

Recently we were introduced to a very fine blog by Dr Kenneth Cohn, www.healthcarecollaboration.com, and after reading through a series of his posts, were inspired to consider our understandings of collaboration vs. partnership. As healthcare moves more towards this notion of ‘partnering’ be it between physicians and hospitals as Dr Cohn discusses, or between physicians [...]

RNcentral released this week their list of Top 50 health 2.0 blogs. As I read through the list, I was interested in its diversity and also the youth of some of the major players. But I was also interested in how this blog intersected with several others I have read recently heralding the demise of [...]

Two recent articles on iHealthbeat this month discuss the ways physicians use the Internet hint at the fact, that as a group, physicians are starting to use the Internet and web 2.0 technologies in particular, like many of their patients. According to Manhattan Research, in 2006 64% of doctors went online to find information on [...]

In one of the final chapters of Groundswell, Li and Bernoff describe the future where the social media of web 2.0 are embedded in every activity on mobile devices and into the real world, where social networks maintain our connections, feeds inform us constantly of any new information, all transactions will be rated and reviewed [...]

As a followup to last week’s discussion of the annual conference of the Scoliosis Research Society last week in Salt Lake City, I thought we would get a report from Syndicom’s VP of Sales and Marketing, Walker Thompson on his experiences at the conference!

K: Walker, you recently attended the annual conference of the Scoliosis Research [...]

Spine surgeons involved on the www.SpineConnect.com network wanted to dig a little deeper and explore the emergence of internet based collaboration in surgical decision making and new technology training. This meant surveying SpineConnect users (Spine surgeons) to explore the impact of how www.SpineConnect.com changed their surgical plan or provided additional information in order to learn [...]

Last week we asked how many people in the SpineConnect community classified themselves as creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators or inactives. Building on the numbers, this week we wanted to discuss the list of Syndicom ‘homes’ listed to the right of this blog. You will notice now that you can join Syndicom and your colleagues [...]

As an avid follower of health 2.0 and medicine 2.0 news, I was inundated last week with reports, tweets and blogs from the Medicine 2.0 conference in Toronto. Medicine 2.0 is an international gathering focused on web 2.0 technologies and their impact on health and medicine. It is organized and co-sponsored by several journals and [...]

Welcome to Syndicom’s first podcast in its 2008 series!
Listen to the podcast:

In this interview, Walker Thompson, VP Sales and Marketing at Syndicom sits down to chat with Dr. Ray Miles from UC Berkeley, author of the book “Collaborative Entrepreurship”. In this conversation, Dr Miles discusses the companies which inspired the book (set in 2010) and [...]

“The network is opening up some amazing possibilities for us to reinvent content, reinvent collaboration.” Said Tim O’Reilly, arguably the Godfather of web2.0. But how to bring about the amazing effects of collaboration with all these tools? Oh, what is a manager to do?
With new products, innovative marketing programs and “business as usual” comes teams [...]

Or perhaps one of the 18% “creators”? Maybe you are a “joiner”, as are 25% of US adults online?
Recently I revisited Groundswell and Li and Bernoff’s social technographics ladder where they define classes of web 2.0 participants according to their activity or contribution to the technologies with which they associate. I thought we might [...]

When we think about centers of excellence, what comes to mind?
State of the art buildings and equipment? Innovative research projects and programs? The sharpest minds on the planet? Urban or metropolitan locations? All of the above? These all sound like extraordinary attributes and strengths to house in one place but what could be the [...]

One of the health 2.0 bloggers I follow, Bertalan Mesko at ScienceRoll, recently uploaded a presentation on Slideshare– The impact of web 2.0 on medicine and healthcare, demonstrating the difference web 2.0 technologies are making to medical education and medical practice.
One of the main components of this revisioning of medical education involves web based communities, [...]

A recent post on www.ceoforum.com by Les Williamson, Managing Director CISCO NZ and AUS, highlighted what all CEO’s should know: collaboration is web2.0. The post goes on to illustrate the past, present and future of the internet. The breakdown was significant, because Williamson was able to highlight what a lot of us web-people already know: [...]

You’ve got a dilemma. You are faced with a challenging case. You can’t decide which instrument to use. Who do you turn to for advice? Do you choose an expert? A colleague? A peer? A friend? All of the above? You call them. Not in their office. Probably in surgery. Where do you turn now? [...]

One of the cruxes of business process today is the quandary regarding innovation: in a time where true innovation seems fleeting, as if its all been done before, from where do the true quantum leaps emerge? Images of a CEO with a very large, pulsating brain sitting in a locked room with a chalkboard, a pot [...]

One of my mountain biking artist friends is often overheard telling others on the trail when encountering a technical section, “speed is your friend”. Our family physician was also often overheard saying ‘more haste, less speed’. These two diverse expressions of professional artistry revolve around the experience of ‘coodinated velocity’ or the speed that comes from [...]

Consider the following…(From Manhattan Research and Greystone.net)

99% of physicians are online for personal or professional purposes, and 83% consider the Internet essential to their practice.
Physicians are turning to the web and their Blackberrys for clinical information, increasingly using them to replace physical sources such as journals, textbooks, drug references and conferences.
Physicians who participate in social [...]

“If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” Sir Isaac Newton.
In making this statement, Sir Isaac Newton paid homage to the collaborative nature of all innovation and development. These are not solo activities. We do not have the capacity to see all angles and [...]

“In flow we feel totally involved, lost in a seemingly effortless performance. Paradoxically, we feel 100% alive when we are so committed to the task at hand that we lose sight of time, of our interests, even of our existence”
M. Czikszentmihalyi ” Good business: Leadership, flow and the making of meaning.”
When was the last time [...]

Donald Schon in his book, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, argues that in considering professional practice solely as a process of rational problem solving, we ignore the artistic process of problem setting, or how we choose the decision to be made, the ends to be met and how we will get there. This artistic process is [...]

When we consider how work gets done in the medical realm, we very often focus solely on ‘the physician’, ‘the nurse’, or ‘the surgeon’ and consider them as individual actors. But is this a fair representation of the work they do and the people they are? Should they act as solo professionals or are those [...]

In 2003, Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs wrote that particular technologies radically reorganized the ways in which individuals cooperated in societies. Rheingold, one of the first scholars to discuss the rise of virtual community in his case study of The Well, is considered an authority on the ways in which society is [...]

There are good things coming out of Harvard these days. I’m not just taking about the, well, everything that they do. If you listen to their content creation machine HarvardBusiness.org then you know. One of their most recent podcasts, described how Hollywood has been one of the longest running innovators. But, at times, has been [...]

The advances in web collaboration can’t be understated. We can text, chat, post cases, comment, reply, email, web conference, teleconference, second-life-it, skype-it, google-it, tag-it, upload, download and ftp-it. More businesses than not have reaped the collaboration rewards, however, as a culture are we neglecting the value of the face-to-face meeting?

Try this: the next time you’re [...]

Last weekend I joined up with some of my favorite people in the world to run the Gunnsion Gorge- a black rock canyon filled with clear, cold, tumbling water. The pools and rapids make for excellent fun in a boat, and river otter, big horned sheep, and other families of charismatic megafauna frequent the scene.
My [...]

So, I’m sitting at my desk when I get a call from a reporter in Durango, Colorado. She quickly confirms who I am and asks, “can you tell me more about what Syndicom does?” I’m taken by surprise and answer. A few more questions later and her part of the call is finished. I ask, [...]

What better way to collaborate than to participate in some healthy competition? Last week Trails2000.org, a local Durango, CO trail advocacy group, presented a challenge to local businesses. The challenge: have your employees pledge to commute to work and win! Was the Syndicom team up to the challenge? You bet! Did we win? Well, of [...]

Where does innovation come from? Look left. Now look right. Check above you. What about near your feet? Did you see innovation? You did…
Innovation is your users. And, guess what? You’re a USER. Of something. What are you passionate about? If you have passion, then perhaps you have innovation. Now imagine tapping that passion from [...]

Collaboration depends on the people you’re working with, right… So what happens when you’re working with someone that you don’t quite “gel” with?

Perhaps you’ve taken one of those workplace personality tests? What about the Myers-Brigg? If you’re lucky, you spent a few hours with a gypsy named “moonbeam” who gave you insight into your inner [...]

The Committee on Medicine and Public Health created a monograph which elucidates and presents collaborative strategies and efforts/activities of medical communities which focus on particular problems/solutions. The outcomes of the specific collaborative initiatives bring light to a larger collaborative vision to improve healthcare.

According to the monograph, the Committee on Medicine and Public Health created a [...]

Ya’ll saw this about the NIH right? http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200804114
More details…
This week, rules went into effect that say that reports of research funded by the National Institutes of Health, the major medical research funding agency in the United States, must be made freely available after a maximum of one year. A publication based on NIH-funded work is [...]

Sunday mornings deserve most the credit. Call them what you will: “slow Sunday mornings”, “day of rest” or “beginning of your week”. For me, they are spent researching, reading and rewinding. I try to go deep so to speak. I pull back and think about ideas. My time includes a few Google searches to find [...]

Remember fire drills in grade school? The principal would come to the front of the auditorium and explain the escape method, goals and how to help each other. You were 10, so about half of what she said sunk in. The day of the test would’ve been a Wednesday (seemed like they always were). The [...]

I’m new to the idea of using collaboration to better my sales and marketing craft. To help me, some of the Syndicom folks have offered up buzz phrases so I can truly understand what great collaboration means…
“It’s like LinkedIn with a purpose…”
“Good things happen when people connect…”
“It’s not like a sewing pattern, it takes work…”
“I [...]

At the beginning of the new millennium, we published an article entitled “The Future.org.” In 2005, we expanded that article into a book, Collaborative Entrepreneurship: How Communities of Networked Firms Use Continuous Innovation to Create Economic Value. In those pieces, we predicted that a new organizational form would emerge in one of the world’s advanced [...]