Don Tapscott, the author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, is a renowned thought leader about collaboration in business. He’s also a consultant and speaker specialising in business strategy, organisational transformation and the role of technology in business and society.

He speaks widely about his vision for the future of the web and working, the next phase of which he views as being about collaboration.

He, rightly in our opinion, believes this collaboration will herald a profound change in the way enterprises innovate, orchestrate to create value, and compete in the marketplace.

The author has recently recorded a video for mckinseyquarterly.com in which he outlines his view of how businesses’ internal collaboration could be improved by new ways of working. He specifically describes why effective knowledge management within enterprises requires replacing e-mail with a new paradigm – using forms of social media.

You can watch his video here.

At Alliantist we see this collaboration, both internal and external, gaining traction in many different business areas, and notably, of course, public service. However, our business remit is to not just introduce new technology into our customers’ working lives, but also the new ways of working that this technology enables, but also needs to be fully realised.

It’s very interesting to see how forward thinkers such as Don Tapscott are banging the drum for new, and collaborative, ways of working. He sees the old informational meetings, often dominated by stronger personalities, as being an inefficient way of disseminating information around a business.

At Alliantist, we like to push our model of the ‘elegant performer’ – that is the person who uses new technology as the catalyst for collaborative working. This is the person who uses the available technology to work in such a way that benefits the enterprise as a whole, unselfishly sharing information and practices that will build up the business as a whole.

Perhaps this is the most interesting aspect of this new social model for business – not just that new technology can improve outcomes, but that new technology can improve the way people perform – introducing them to new paradigms of working that will break down organisational silos just as effectively as the technology that sparks this reformation.