Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

Ok, so I stole the “col­lab­o­ra­tion is the new com­pe­ti­tion” hook from Alex Bogusky, a true sage of our indus­try. You can read about his inter­pre­ta­tions of this phrase on his site, but let me take a moment to explain how it affects my busi­ness oper­a­tionally and one way I think it effects every­one involved in mar­ket­ing today.

I’ve writ­ten a lot here about the rapid change in tech­nol­ogy our indus­try is expe­ri­enc­ing right now. I’ve also writ­ten a lot about how smaller to mid­sized adver­tis­ing agen­cies are find­ing it hard to staff with enough tal­ented peo­ple. And how mar­ket­ing depart­ments strug­gle just to keep up with their work­load in their down­sized depart­ments. Every­one is stressed these days just to keep up with the work while busi­ness lead­ers are look­ing for strate­gies to stay prof­itable in the new economy.

For­tu­nately social tech­nol­ogy has enabled new ways of work­ing, con­nect­ing, and col­lab­o­rat­ing that, when lever­aged cor­rectly, can have real ben­e­fits to the cost and effec­tive­ness of pro­vid­ing ser­vices to clients. How so?

One exam­ple is Base­camp that enables project man­age­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion with no regard for prox­im­ity or even brick and mor­tar. The cloud has freed us from the need for large and nar­rowly struc­tured orga­ni­za­tions to com­plete com­plex projects.

This means my busi­ness and even a group of free­lancers can func­tion within your project just as if we’re an inte­grated part or your orga­ni­za­tion. Sud­denly, col­lab­o­ra­tion isn’t pain in the butt for a project man­ager but a chance to bring in exper­tise and fresh think­ing from any­where on the globe.

It also allows busi­ness to add exper­tise and ser­vices with­out hav­ing to take on the sig­nif­i­cant costs of mov­ing to a big­ger space and hir­ing more peo­ple. Because col­lab­o­ra­tion is so much eas­ier these days, my busi­ness can inte­grate with your busi­ness in the cloud on a project by project basis. Imag­ine the flex­i­bil­ity and the cost advan­tages you sud­denly have.

Col­lab­o­ra­tion make you com­pet­i­tive. It can turn men into giants. And give small busi­nesses the reach of mega cor­po­ra­tions. Now each project you touch can be so much more effec­tive and drive more ROI. Truly, col­lab­o­ra­tion is the new com­pe­ti­tion. How will you use col­lab­o­ra­tion to become more effective?