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The question of whether to use the word co-operation instead of collaboration has arisen many times in recent weeks after we published the article “Say Goodbye to Collaboration”. In light of that we would like to give a little more detail on the rationale of such a controversial shift.

We chose to use the word co-operation instead of collaboration because those two words have different roots and slightly different semantics. It is really of no interest why, but nowadays we use these two terms interchangeably, even though they are not exactly the same. They don’t represent the same object. Let’s take a look to them in context.

Collaborate

1871, back-formation from collaborator (1802), from Fr. collaborateur, from L. collaboratus, pp. of collaborare “work with,” from com- “with”

+ labore “to work.” Collaboration “traitorous cooperation with the enemy,” dates from 1940, originally in reference to the Vichy Government of France.

Cooperation

1398, from L.L. cooperationem “a working together,” from cooperari “to work together,” from com- “with” + operari “to work” (see operation).

Co-op is first recorded 1872, a shortening of co-operative store.

And the last one…

Operation

c.1386, “action, performance, work,” also “the performance of some science or art,” from O.Fr. operacion, from L. operationem (nom. operatio) “a working, operation,” from operari “to work, labor” (in L.L. “to have effect, be active, cause”), from opera “work, effort,” related to opus (gen. operis) “a work” (see opus). The surgical sense is first attested 1597. Military sense of “series of movements and acts” is from 1749. Operational attested from 1922.

Based on the subtle differences we were looking for a definition that denotes “work with” and “work together”. There lays an interesting difference between the definitions, subtle but important, one involves actions and TIME though a series of actions. Looking closer to OPERATION we can understand that the real meaning is “action, performance, work”. That is why we don’t focus in the deliverable (the by product), even though we have to recognize that it has always been important and we assume from the start that it will always be… In short, we perform a task in order to get something done… that’s quite obvious, so we believe the focus is on the ACTION, in the PERFORMANCE. In that light, our focus is on the WORK.

We are not here trying to answer the question: “How do we improve our documents?” and we bet neither Google with Wave nor AppJet with Etherpad want that either.  At Corvalius and specifically at the beWeeVee team, we want to answer the question: “How do we improve our WORK?” and it is not only about results but the journey itself.

So we don’t have only a deliverable, or a document, or a spreadsheet or whatever it is. We have work to do, and we have simultaneity at work.

How do we join those things together? The first step to do something is to reason about it, and if you need to align someone else’s effort, you probably would need to give it a name too. Mostly in order to be able to name it among and in combination to other concepts.

Moreover, based on the Ontological Principle, we have no reason to call the same to things that are inherently different. i.e. for us (human beings), a dog is not a cat that barks. So we don’t call it “Barking Cat” we call it “Dog”. Someone can argue that, but we call it “Dog” not only because it barks, but because it has many different characteristics that make it a different thing. But one caveat, even if we are not able to evaluate those characteristics at first sight, if we hear the bark we won’t call it a cat.

What we are trying to say here is that this is probably the first step (and we are just speculating but only time will tell) in a brand new species in interactive and interconnected software application; that in the end will change how we do things and when we do things. And time is important, but when time is involved the real star is simultaneity. That’s why we believe this is not just another kind of collaboration, which is why we need to call it in a different way; mostly because its purposes and processes are clearly different even though both achieve a similar (if not the same) outcome/deliverable.

And by the way, we use it with the dash because two reasons:

a) Because it is allowed to do so.

b) We need to emphasize the roots of the whole word. We don’t want the real meaning of the word gets lost. We chose to emphasize CO (together) from OPERATE.

Furthermore, we found that for some people, the word cooperation (or co-operation) has a connotation of poor synergy. But we think that can be reverted ;-) 

We don’t know any other word that represents the act of two or more people operating something at the same time than co-operate. But we embrace the idea of using an appropriate term regardless of its origin (Will you help us?).

Of course we could use OPERATE-THE-SAME-THING-WITH-ANY-OTHER-PERSON, but that is definitely unpractical. Don’t you think?

Corvalius, Social