Key Finding
Collaboration projects move through a recognizable sequence of phases. Each phase has distinct activities, needs, and success conditions. Understanding this progression enables better support for facilitators and more appropriate tooling for each stage.
Phase Sequence
Phase 1: Explore
Core question: Who has the expertise and capability we’re looking for?
Activities:
- Market research
- Identifying relevant expertise and experience
- Mapping available capability in network
- Scanning for who has done this before
Information needs:
- Who has the relevant expertise?
- What capability exists within our network and where are gaps?
- Who has already worked on similar problems?
Success condition: Sufficient knowledge of available resources and relevant prior experience to move to planning
Phase 2: Initiate
Core activity: Defining the problem and establishing initial agreements
Activities:
- Problem definition
- Setting goals
- Stakeholder and ecosystem analysis
- Partner selection
- Governance setup
- Timeline establishment
Information needs:
- Clear problem definition shared across potential partners
- Aligned goals despite different partner interests
- Identified stakeholders and ecosystem
- Selected partners with clear roles
- Governance and decision-making framework
- Realistic timeline and commitments
Success condition: Agreement on problem, goals, partners, and governance; readiness to move into relationship-building
Phase 3: Understand
Core activity: Building trust and alignment before executing work
Activities:
- Creating trust between partners
- Developing shared language
- Understanding individual partner objectives
- Surfacing and aligning on assumptions
- Problem analysis
- Identifying individual incentives and constraints
Information needs:
- Trust signals established
- Shared understanding of problem and goals
- Individual objectives of each partner articulated
- Assumptions made explicit and questioned
- Individual incentives understood
- Underlying drivers and constraints clarified
Success condition: Partners have genuine commitment and trust; individual objectives aligned enough to proceed; assumptions shared and validated
Phase 4: Co-create / Experiment
Core activity: Doing the work together; maintaining alignment and health throughout
Activities:
- Health checks through “thermometer” approach:
- Right people involved?
- Right expertise represented?
- Good relationships being maintained?
- Value being created for everyone?
- Progress monitoring
- Sharing lessons and failures
- Continuity management
- Transferring decisions to operational layer
- Informing and updating community
- Fast and simple questions within community
Information needs:
- Real-time health signals (right people, right expertise, relationship quality, value creation)
- Progress tracking and momentum indicators
- Emerging learnings and failures captured
- Partner satisfaction with progress
- Community awareness and engagement
- Signals that allow rapid problem-solving
Success condition: Team stays healthy and engaged; momentum is maintained; value is being created and visible; learning is captured; broader community is informed and engaged
Phase 5: Wrap Up
Core activity: Evaluating outcomes, capturing learning, preparing for next steps
Activities:
- Evaluation of results
- Impact assessment
- Lessons learned capture
- Knowledge sharing (now and for future use)
- Scaling decisions
Information needs:
- Clear evaluation of what was achieved
- Impact quantified and understood
- Lessons systematically captured (what worked, what didn’t, why)
- Knowledge documented for future reuse
- Decisions about scaling or expanding
Success condition: Learning captured systematically; impact understood; knowledge preserved; organization learns from experience
Phase 6: Transfer
Core activity: Transitioning learning and capability into sustainable practice
Activities:
- Owner identification
- Securing connections for sustainability
- Creating living archive of knowledge
- Onboarding new community members
- Preserving relationships for future collaboration
Information needs:
- Clear ownership and accountability going forward
- Key relationships and connections documented
- Knowledge made accessible and searchable
- Community structure maintained
- New members able to access context and join
Success condition: Ownership secured; relationships maintained; knowledge persists; capability embedded; foundation laid for future collaboration
Cross-Phase Patterns
Information Need Across All Phases
Platform opportunity - Individual progress overview:
- What were the goals of each stakeholder?
- How much progress is being made toward each goal?
- Is attention and resources evenly directed, or do we need to steer to keep everyone on board?
Communication Pattern Across All Phases
How collaboration actually happens (underneath the formal phases):
- 1-on-1 conversations (Explore, Initiate, Understand phases—dominant)
- Quick questions in Teams channels/signal groups (Co-create and onwards—dominant)
- Individual progress tracking (throughout)
Operational Design Principles
Exit/Transfer Considerations: Structure agreements so partners can part ways when they’re no longer a good fit for where the collaboration is going or needs to go.
Onboarding: Build processes and knowledge capture to enable onboarding of new community members when people switch roles, departments, or projects.
Platform Implications by Phase
Explore Phase
- Need: Directory of people, expertise, locations
- Tool: Searchable people/expertise database; prior project archive
- Key capability: Quick identification and mobilization of right people and knowledge
Initiate Phase
- Need: Problem definition, goal-setting, partner selection tools
- Tool: Problem definition templates, partner matrix, governance frameworks
- Key capability: Structured planning without creating process burden
Understand Phase
- Need: Relationship building, individual objective tracking, assumption capture
- Tool: Stakeholder mapping, one-on-one conversation records, objective registry
- Key capability: Individual alignment without requiring formal alignment meetings
Co-create Phase
- Need: Health monitoring, progress tracking, lesson capture, fast communication
- Tool: Health check dashboard, progress tracking, quick Q&A channels, lesson capture
- Key capability: Automated health signals plus easy peer connection and learning
Wrap Up Phase
- Need: Evaluation tools, impact measurement, lesson capture
- Tool: Evaluation framework, impact dashboard, lesson repository
- Key capability: Systematic learning capture; knowledge accessible for future projects
Transfer Phase
- Need: Knowledge preservation, onboarding, relationship documentation
- Tool: Living archive, community structure, relationship mapping
- Key capability: Knowledge persists; new members can quickly understand context
Related Insights
- Innovation collaboration is fundamentally relational, not systemic
- Facilitator role is multifaceted and highly demanding
- Three structural collaboration modes emerge across practice
- Portfolio managers need better tooling for helicopter view and lessons capture
- Ease of use is critical; collaboration is people-driven, not process-driven