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Research Crossing Disciplines for Collaborative Research by Robert Briggs, G.J. de Vreede, Roni Reiter-Palmon, and Lynn Harland What can be done to reduce the dropout rate among urban school children? How can thousands of managers in a multinational corporation conduct risk and control analyses? How can a company achieve consensus among stakeholders? These are just a few of the questions addressed by research- ers at the Institute for Collaboration Science (ICS) at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). ICS was formed in 2006 to study the effects of individual, group, organizational, and societal factors on how well people work together to achieve common goals. Bringing together faculty and students from UNO's College of Business Admin- istration and five other colleges on campus, ICS has three missions: collaborative research, collaborative education, and community outreach. A recent ICS project demonstrates the impact that collaboration sci- ence research can have in improv- ing a company's operations. ICS researchers worked with an interna- tional organization that coordinates responses to global humanitarian and political crises to increase its flexibility and instill a stronger culture of col- laboration among the staff. Testing a Theory ICS assembled a project team that included members with backgrounds in collaboration science, manage- ment, industrial and organizational psychology, information systems, and 58 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2008 knowledge man- agement. Togeth- er, team members developed a new theory—the Value Frequency Model for Change of Practice—that could predict how well new col- laborative work practices would be accepted and sus- tained once oppor- tunities to improve collaboration within an organization were identified. Under this new theory, team members conducted interviews with individuals throughout the company and identified 12 high-value tasks most likely to benefit from improved collaboration. Because crisis pre- vention planning was an area most important to the organization, the team decided that it was the best place to start putting new collabora- tive techniques to the test. The ICS team then worked with stakeholders to develop and deploy new collaborative work procedures, as well as define responsibilities, channels of communication, deliver- ables, and measures of merit. Before the organization began working with ICS, its crisis prevention pro- gram moved so slowly that condi- tions could change more quickly than plans could be developed and approved. With new procedures in place, the organization's leaders report that they now can complete a task in less than one quarter of the time it used to require. In addition, the team discovered that the organization already had a number of computer-based collabo- ration tools that were being under- utilized, while other needs could be filled with tools available on the market. ICS experts devised a new approach to collaboration software and have already acquired a research grant to develop prototypes. Linking Theory to Results To further test the Value Frequency Model for Change of Practice, ICS assigned student teams to use the protocol in community outreach projects, for which they designed collaboration-based solutions for five companies. For example, one team worked for a financial services company. Within the company, law- yers, accountants, financial planners, brokers, and other professionals needed to work together to create comprehensive financial plans for clients, but they did not work well as teams. The students introduced them to simple collaboration tech- niques and helped the company develop software technology to support their work. When the proj-