1. Communication and Collaboration
FITT
(Fostering Interregional Exchange in ICT Technology Transfer)
www.FITT-for-Innovation.eu
Communication & Collaboration tools
Collaboration of people from different teams, institutions or companies
Technology Transfer involves different persons: researchers, TT officers,
lawyers, companies, …
 Inter- and intra-team collaboration needs usable tools
 One-way communication vs. Interactive communication tools
 Challenge: Implement tools
 that minimise collaboration efforts
 that are used without time consumption
 that are up to date
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2. Process Communication & Collaboration
Definitions
 Communication
can be defined as the process of sending and receiving information among
people. Shannon’s model is often described as the beginning of modern
communication theory as it fits for interpersonal communication as well as
to mass communication.
Information Trans-mitter
Channel Receiver Destination
source
Noise
Adaption of Shannon’s Communication Process
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Communication
Information source: e.g. a person who creates a message.
Message, sent by the information source and received by the destination.
Transmitter: can be a medium (e.g. telephone) but also the sound of the voice in face-to-
face communication
Signal, which flows through a channel, e.g. electronic signals, radio waves, or words and
pictures in a book.
Channel: The most common channels are air, light, electricity, radio waves, paper, and
postal systems.
Noise, in the form of secondary signals that obscure or confuse the signal carried.
Receiver: Originally, the receiving telephone instrument. In face to face communication a
set of ears (sound) and eyes (gesture). In television, several layers of receiver,
including an antenna and a television set.
Destination: Presumably a person who consumes and processes the message.
Trans- Re-
Source mitter
Channel Destination
ceiver
Noise
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3. Collaboration
Definition:
 Derived from the Latin word “collaborare” meaning: to work jointly with
others
 Today: joint efforts and inputs from different people in a working
environment
Current trends in Collaboration:
 new internet technologies have created a new kind of “mass collaboration”
 Basis: improvements like high speed internet, wireless connection and web-
based collaboration tools like wikis or blogs.
Results:
 People from all over the world can efficiently communicate and share ideas
 One impressive example of this mass collaboration is the online
“Wikipedia”, where thousands of people contributed to currently 14 billion
articles in more than 260 languages.
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Communication & collaboration for
technology transfer process
 Key issue for technology transfer, especially
• between researchers (common research project)
• between researchers and TTO (evaluating transfer opportunities)
• between researchers and companies (evaluating cooperation possibilities).
 Communication & collaboration tools can be used to address the
difficulty of
• Raising awareness for technology transfer topics within research
community
• convincing researchers to come forward with their ideas/technologies and
• possibly considering starting up their own venture.
 There is a close connection of the topic “communication and
collaboration” and the topic “Networking and clustering”
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4. In Practice
Tools for Collaboration
MFG internal communication and
collaboration tools consists of:
 MFG Intranet: central platform for internal information
 MFG InnovationWIKI: MFG knowledge pool
 CRM: Community Relationship Management tool
 Pidgin: instant messaging system
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MFG knowledge management – Overview
MFG Intranet Community Relationship Management
 central platform for relevant  The linkage between contacts
news and documents or projects
 used at least once a day  Active participation and
 Participation of everyone up to date data
allowed and expected
MFG
knowledge
Instant Messaging Tool
management
MFG InnovationWIKI  Can reduce internal phone calls
and emails with little content
 knowledge pool for relevant
topics and trends  Widely accepted: about 2/3 of
staff uses the instant
 Currently more than 1.600 messaging tool every day
articles
 Consideration as optional tool,
 Used by every employee which can integrated into daily
work according to his/her needs
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5. In Practice
Collaboration Setup for Research – CoCoNut
CoCoNut = an internal IBBT project involving researchers from many
domains & backgrounds (sociologists, economics, engineers, law
researchers, mathematicians, etc.)
“research the ways in which IBBT researchers work and interact, design
the ideal collaboration/sharing environment to work efficiently while
being geographically spread.”
MyBBT = The implementation of the coconut findings
“Smart, interactive, attractive collaboration & knowledge sharing
platform for IBBT researchers and partners”
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CoCoNUT – Idea
 It established was established, because
• IBBT is a decentrally structured organisation
- 900 researcher spread over 5 universities and many more campuses.
- Equal amount of research partners in industry
• There was no common work space before MyBBT
- Projects did have separate, closed collab websites
- This means: no knowledge sharing cross projects, no overview for senior
people that participate in more than 1 project
- Hence: little or no tools for knowledge sharing.
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6. CoCoNut – Impact
 Most added value for seniors, who need overview and dashboards
 When everybody uses the tool in the right way we should be able to:
• Provide a single source of info regarding IBBT projects to our researchers
• Have one single point of entry for all IBBT related questions that are not publically available
• Have clear processes and practices defined and documented
• Have a good way to communicate to the IBBT community, or segments of it.
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Suggested Readings
 Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration
Changes Everything, 2006
 Link to bibliography
 Link to code book
 Link to relevant websites
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