What is "Collaboration" ?

When I was working at Morgan Stanley, I once asked my supervisor, what's the difference between "Teamwork" and "Collaboration". They sounds pretty similar, a bunch of people work together, for a common goal; So why and when do we wanna use the word "Collaboration"?

The definition of "Collaboration" can be found on Wikipedia, and dictionary. "Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor^{[1] [2]} that is creative in nature^[3]—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. " - from Wikipedia.

But more important, the clue of the difference between these two words can be found here: "In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.^[5]Collaboration is also present in opposing goals exhibiting the notion of adversarial collaboration, though this is not a common case for using the term." -Wikipedia.

My supervisor answered like this: "Teamwork is that a group of people work together, but not necessary collaboratively; they can contribute their own part, without interact with other team member"; "and Collaboration, is that a group of people work collaboratively, means that they have to interact a lot, to generate the end result."

For me, the difference can be translated in another way: Teamwork could be something you can collect those contribution by individuals, and put them together in the end; But Collaboration is that the whole team work together and interact with the time line of the project, to generate the end results. Here is what Wikipedia says: "Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication.^[4] These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving. "

Hope the explanation of Collaboration could provide you some idea of how it works.

To be continue.......