Collaboration Cultures

WHETHER THROUGH INTERDEPARTMENTAL TRANSPARENCY OR INTERNAL CROWDSOURCING, THESE 15 COMPANIES ARE FINDING EFFECTIVE WAYS TO ENGINEER CREATIVE CHEMISTRY.

Attivo Networks SAN FRANCISCO

The cybersecurity firm, which deploys technology to help businesses detect and respond to attacks, assigns a “champion” to mentor each new hire, boasts a

93% annual employee-retention rate, and reinvests one-third of revenues into research and development.

Blue Prism WARRINGTON, ENGLAND

The robotic-process automation company makes its proprietary software and training materials available to universities (including Texas A&M, Aditya Engineering College, and the University of Manchester), and in January opened a new artificial intelligence lab in its London facility.

B-reel STOCKHOLM

Three times a year, the Swedish creative agency assigns one team member from each of its five global offices to spend several days in the company’s Barcelona R&D lab to work on a custom brief designed around a significant challenge, such as creating a new application for Google’s AR Core product.

Chobani NORWICH, NY

To reduce inefficiencies and increase collaboration, the private yogurt company brought 90% of its agency work (including advertising, PR, design, consumer research, and retail execution) in-house, creating a 359-person department that operates under one budget. The change allowed Chobani to take its Less Sugar Greek Yogurt product from concept to stores in less than six months.

Forward NEW YORK

The three-year-old primary-care practice, which provides services for a monthly fee, pairs engineers with physicians to develop new, advanced medical technology.

Influxdata SAN FRANCISCO

The seven-year-old database company’s main product, Influxdb, is an opensource technology designed to manage and store massive volumes of timestamped data. To ensure effective communication with a largely remote engineering staff, Influxdata applies the same open-source ethos of transparency: All trainings, documentation, and presentations are available via its Youtube channel, blog posts, and webinars on the company’s site.

Lexisnexis NEW YORK

Employee volunteers at the legal and professional services provider worked closely with the International Bar Association to develop the eyewitness to Atrocities app, the first-ever smartphone app designed to document human rights abuses, marking and safeguarding images so they can be entered as evidence in court.

Mozilla MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA

Mozilla has a tradition of building opensource technologies, allowing any user to access and use and modify its code. The company has awarded $6.4 million to universities, research nonprofits, and other noncommercial partners since 2015, with its Open Innovation team advising, financing, and collaborating on products that keep the internet “safe, open, and accessible to all as it evolves.”

Notable SAN FRANCISCO

Notable uses its automated laboratory and artificial intelligence to predict how cancer cells will react to drugs. The company brings together engineers, doctors, scientists, and healthcare experts to inform its product and has large-scale partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, publicly traded biotech startups, and research institutions like MD Anderson Cancer Center and Stanford.

Pivotal SAN FRANCISCO

Cloud-based software maker Pivotal requires all of its programmers to write software in pairs. This, the company says, motivates employees to “push each other to meet goals,” while also providing a safety net to test, experiment, and fix code together. Partners rotate and work within various larger teams to ensure that everyone in the company is exposed to new perspectives regularly.

Rubikloud Technologies TORONTO

Rubikloud Technologies combines retail data with machine learning and artificial intelligence to help businesses market and manage customer experiences. The company has a close relationship with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Ontario, where members of Rubikloud’s team work directly with PHD candidates to re

search and solve machine-learning and data-science issues in Rubikloud’s products.

Thorn LOS ANGELES

Building technology to defend children against sexual abuse, nonprofit Thorn collaborates with law enforcement, NGOS, governments, and private-sector partners. With fewer than 50 employees, Thorn has successfully identified more than 9,000 victims across 35 countries, in large part due to partnerships with tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which provide resources, technology, and expertise. A recent partnership with Google, for example, included integrating full-time Google engineers into Thorn’s product team for a six-month fellowship.

Workiva AMES, IA

Workiva attributes the success of its cloud-based data-management tools (more than

75% of Fortune 500 companies use them) to a highly collaborative productdevelopment process: The R&D groups work closely with finance, accounting, and operations teams to coordinate requirements, while developers and product managers meet regularly with customers throughout a product’s life cycle.