Getting to the most audacious and innovative ideas requires the coming together of diverse people with different backgrounds and superpowers. The output of any creative endeavor differs depending upon whose synapses are firing around the table. We value it. We strive for it. But we often struggle with it. This leads us to the question: If collaboration is so great, why is it so hard? We asked several Creative thought leaders what they think.

Tiff Rolfe
CCO, CO:
“Collaboration works great on paper. But then people happen. When it moves into the real world you get personal (and corporate) agendas, egos and insecurities. At its core great collaboration takes trust and openness.”

Cassandra ‘Coach Cass’ Nuamah
Health and Wellness Influencer
“Once people can see the value of joining forces together to make it to a common goal faster, along with receiving mutual benefits, then the threat of competition and fear of being “used” can be erased. Each party can then see the meaningful reason for working together. Until then, “the collaboration struggle” is real.”

Alex Collmer
Founder & CEO VidMob
“Collaborating takes more time. Period. And in a world where creativity increasingly needs to be in synch with the cultural moment, time is most definitely not on our side. Well-designed technology can remove a whole lot of that friction, enabling faster collaboration with the ultimate goal of stronger creativity.”

Pete Blackshaw
Global Head of Digital Innovation & Service Models, Nestle
“Great collaboration requires proactive community building, curation, and always-on emotional intelligence. This is especially critical if you are using an internal collaboration tool like Workplace, Chatter, or Slack. Organizational cynicism or even chaos is only one-click away if you don’t lead.”

Walshy Fire
DJ / Musician
“Collaboration is only really difficult when one or both sides don’t feel the collab is beneficial to them. For a collab to properly work both teams have to be excited about working with each other. A mutual level of creative energy has to be shared.”

Arva Rice
President & CEO NY Urban League
“Collaboration takes more time than going it alone. In the most effective collaborations stakeholders have stated and shared expectations, roles and definitions of success. Sustainable collaborations also must include shared values. Developing those shared baselines takes time, but it is worth the investment.”

Howard Jordan Jr.
TV Writer
“Collaboration is hard because being original, smart and daring is hard. There’s no singular “right” answer to any creative question. It’s about feelings and timing and intuition and learning to speak someone else’s language or teaching them to speak yours in a way that feels good to all participants.”

Josiah Woodson
Musician
“Collaboration is difficult because everyone is already on their own trajectory and speed with their goal in mind. Collaborating inevitably changes the goal point and the speed of all participants which makes it imperative and difficult to choose collaborators in such a way as to approximately predict and agree upon the new goal point and pace. The whole process then becomes even more complicated when you factor in the practice of having multiple collaborators for different periods of time…”

We talk a lot about technology at Facebook. Where is it leading us? What is it doing to us? What can we do with it that we couldn’t do before?

But, I’m a bit tired of talking about technology by itself. And you’re probably tired of reading about it.

For me, the thing that really matters is not technology, it’s people. It’s community.

When I look at the things happening on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, at their core is humanity. The technology is great but what’s truly amazing is what people, communities and brands are doing with it.

Take just a few of the movements from the past year, from the Women’s March to Black Lives Matter from #MeToo to March for our Lives, the power of an event, a momentous occasion, of a hashtag to pull us all together is noteworthy and increasingly powerful with technology. Thinking historically, we’ve seen other big ideas like the Ice Bucket Challenge, “High Five for Hand Washing”, Small Business Saturday and REI’s “#OptOutside” bring people together around the world to affect change IRL. And, the role that brands can play in this space to augment and authentically support these big ideas is wide open.

In a world where government and institutions are challenged, people are coming together to get done what needs to get done. It’s never felt truer that one person and one idea can change the world with the understanding that success is dependent on cultural collaboration — either for literally the whole world or for a local community.

We’ve been exploring what’s happening at this intersection of community, creativity and technology and it’s inspiring. When we think about the ideas that are gaining momentum and will continue to gain momentum in the world, we believe there is a unifying theory for the kind of work that resonates with people. And it is simple: The ideas that bring people together are the ones changing the world.

In this spirit, we want to bring these ideas and conversations together with the creative community: to connect us around this shared mission; to celebrate work that is astounding communities; to spotlight work that is bringing people together; to understand more deeply how this work got started, how it unfolded and how it succeeded or failed. We are calling it Curated. And, we look forward to building this with you.