Zone of Proximal Development | Writing to learn and learning about learning.

A lot of pixels have been burned promoting and evaluating the advantages of Web 2.0 and its social collaboration approach to business and learning. Here’s three I came across today:

Six ways to make Web 2.0 work

9 simple and free ways to measure social media marketing results

IBM Lotusphere 2009 Highlights – The Business Value of Collaboration Software

Buried at the bottom of the last one, is the question “…is your business culturally ready?” And there’s the rub. Collaboration isn’t something you can just start doing one day. It requires a particular kind of mindset within a supportive culture. Here’s the best explanation I’ve found of what collaboration is:

Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age Randy Nelson

Randy sets a pretty high bar. In the current economic climate, it seems pretty audacious to aim for that. Wouldn’t it be far safer to simply hunker down and look out for number 1? Collaboration, of the knd Randy talks about, requires a degree of vulnerability that “…is your business culturally ready?” only hints at. But here’s the thing, we’re already vulnerable. The question is how to respond to that insight.