Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration

Consider these joint ventures: Picasso and C Braque creating Cubism and reshaping the geometries of art; Nils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and the quantum physicists Joining together to map the subatomic universe, Watson and Crick discovering the double helix of life itself; the Wright Brothers launching the aviation industry; and seventy-five years later, the "Two Steves"-Wozniak and Jobs-popularizing personal computing through Apple.

Two heads are better than one, the old expression goes, but never before have we realized just how true that dictum is. In virtually every creative endeavor-art, advertising, computer software, law, entertainment, design, advanced technology-collaboration is the fundamental force. But while collaboration is clearly one of the most productive and important of all human relationships, it is also one of the least understood.

Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration is the first book to explore the role of tools and technologies in shaping the collaborative process. Clearly, provocatively, it argues that all successful collaborations require a unique symbiosis of temperament and tools: this is a book where creativity, personality and technology all intersect.

From a Boeing 747 cockpit to an operating theater to a business meeting in the conference room, our environments shape the way we interact and collaborate. Just as we have tools that amplify and augment our ability to communicate, Shared Minds argues that we need tools that augment our ability to collaborate and lucidly explains the critical difference between communication and collaboration. Instead of treating collaboration as something that depends purely on talent and personality, we have to design environments that effectively support collaborative interactions. This has fascinating implications for both the work place and for professionals who depend on successful interactions with others to solve old problems or create new ideas.