(6)Changing Common Sense: Collaboration as a Business Model

摘要

Sustainability is a both a way of being and of doing business. Through sustainability it is possible to make sense of business activity in society. In light of the above, the following report postulates that collaboration is the best way companies and organizations can generate corporate social innovation. For effects of this study, social innovation will be understood as a collective and sustainable initiative that seeks to solve social problems with new, effective and profitable solutions. Its impact is manifested in changes in attitude, behaviors or perceptions that give way to new social practices thus contributing to justice, fairness and equality in terms of how needs and desires are satisfied. Assuming collaboration is a unique and spontaneous phenomenon in human beings, this document contains some of the main results of the “Study of the Collaborative Organizational Model for Corporate Innovation,” whose overall objective was to design an organizational model which would encourage social innovation and generate collaborative work practices within traditional companies. A sample of six cases from a total of over 100 social and cooperative companies was used. The sample was created on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria, along with other criteria deemed as intentional. From the analysis of these cases, multiple teachings can be learned, and beginning with these teachings a model based on 4 dimensions was developed: organizational awareness, organic system, availability for action and relationship quality. Given that the application of the model is not standard for every company or organization, in each dimension key tools or verifiers that guide its application in any type of organization that wishes to generate corporate social innovation are proposed.