Meaning & use
collaborative process
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Meaning
nouncountable
A way of working in which two or more people or groups share ideas and effort to reach a common result.
Grammar: Countable: you can talk about 'a collaborative process' or 'collaborative processes'. It often appears with 'the' when referring to a specific instance.
Patterns
- a collaborative process between A and B
- the collaborative process of doing something
- involve someone in a collaborative process
Writing the new policy was a collaborative process involving teachers, parents, and school leaders.
The company believes that product design should be a collaborative process, not a single person's decision.
Their research uses a collaborative process to combine data from several laboratories.
Word forms
| plural | collaborative processes |
|---|
Common combinations
- a truly collaborative process
- The peace talks were described as a truly collaborative process.
- engage in a collaborative process
- All departments must engage in a collaborative process to set the budget.
- part of a collaborative process
- Peer review is part of a collaborative process that improves scientific papers.
- open and collaborative process
- The city promised an open and collaborative process for the new park design.
Synonyms and how they differ
- team effort
- More informal and focuses on the combined work of a team rather than the steps or method involved.
- joint process
- Similar but less common; 'joint' emphasizes that two or more parties are involved, while 'collaborative' highlights the cooperative spirit.
Opposites
Word family
- collaborate verb
- To work together with others on a shared task.
- collaboration noun
- The act or result of working together.
- collaboratively adverb
- In a way that involves working together.
Commonly confused: collaborative process or cooperative process?
collaborative process vs cooperative process
A cooperative process often means people comply or help willingly, but not necessarily that they plan and create together as equals.
Practice
Choose the sentence that uses 'collaborative process' correctly.
Choose one answer.
When naming the parties, 'between' is the most natural preposition after 'collaborative process'. 'Of' (option 1) is wrong; 'with' (option 2) can work but is less precise; 'among' (option 3) is used for more than two parties and sounds awkward here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “collaborative process”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.