BOOK REVIEW : A Visionary’s View on the New Age of Collaboration : SHARED MINDS The New Technology of Collaboration<i> by Michael Schrage</i> Random House$19.95, 256 pages

Michael Schrage has seen the future, and it works--by collaboration.

According to Schrage, the era of the solitary creative genius--if such a creature ever existed--is over, and the age of collaboration now begins. “If there is a core theme to this book,” Schrage enthuses in “Shared Minds,” “it’s that people should understand that real value in the sciences, the arts, commerce, and, indeed, one’s personal and professional lives, comes largely from the process of collaboration.”

Schrage concedes that the idea of collaboration--which he defines, simply enough, as “an act of shared creation and/or shared discovery”--is “the Rodney Dangerfield of interpersonal relationships, getting no respect or formal recognition in business and professional life.” He observes, for example, that the word “collaborator” still has unsavory associations, thanks to the quislings who “collaborated” with the Nazis during World War II. But Schrage is convinced--and he works hard to convince the rest of us--that collaboration as a tool of creativity is an idea of utopian proportions.

“Collaborative tools and technologies will become the sinews of organizational strength and personal development,” Schrage prophesies. “It won’t matter whether the organization is a rust belt manufacturer, a Silicon Valley start-up, or a postindustrial professional services firm, the collaborative imperative will be an emerging force for productivity.”

Schrage specifically rejects the “Great Man” theory of creativity, which envisions the lone artist or inventor or scientist at work in some solitary studio or laboratory. With few exceptions--Darwin and Freud, for example--Schrage believes real creativity in science and the arts has always been the result of collaboration, and he cites as inspirational examples such famous teams as Lennon and McCartney, Thomas Wolfe and Maxwell Perkins, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, and Nobel laureates James Watson and Francis Crick, the men who discovered the double helix structure of DNA.

Schrage admits there is “an alchemical, almost mystical quality to the best of these collaborations,” but he insists that even less inspired collaborations are preferable to reliance on “an individual’s charm, charisma, authority, or expertise.” What really counts, Schrage argues, is the sharing of the creative impulse, whether in architecture, movie-making or business management.

Schrage writes: “Forget the auteur-theory propaganda spewed by chain-smoking French intellectuals and well-fed members of the Directors Guild: filmmaking at its finest is a truly collaborative enterprise.”

Schrage is a business journalist who specializes in coverage of technological innovation. (He writes the “Innovation” column that appears in the Business section of the Los Angeles Times.) And “Shared Minds” turns out to be as much about the technology of collaboration as it is about the process of collaboration itself. Schrage believes computer technology is the key to successful collaboration; if we are left to our own devices, he warns, an old-fashioned brainstorming session is likely to degenerate into the familiar skirmishing and one-upsmanship of the typical business meeting.

“Most people kid themselves into thinking that they’re collaborating with someone when, in reality, they’re just saying words,” Schrage writes. “What’s going on is a very primitive, almost tribal, power game based upon a perfectly reasonable misunderstanding of what communication means.”

Schrage reports on some cutting-edge technological developments that will encourage the collaborative process in the workplace, including a computer system that simulates a “virtual hallway” in which “a blend of video and computer software . . . allows participants to ‘browse’ by video and chat to see what’s up.”

And he predicts that “over time, collaborative technologies will reframe personal experiences and perspectives as dramatically as the clock changed society’s perception of time and television reshaped the experience of entertainment.”

But the author is too ardent in his advocacy of the collaboration to ask us to wait for some technological revolution before putting his ideas to work. So he also suggests how existing computer technology can be applied to the collaborative process in new and powerful ways, and he is forced to admit that the humble blackboard is still “the most persuasive of collaborative media.”

Schrage is a visionary in the thrall of an idea, a writer in love with language, and these are his most ingratiating and intriguing qualities. Although he flirts with a kind of snappy post-industrial techno-psycho-babble--the word “empower” is a bit overused--what makes “Shared Minds” truly persuasive is Schrage’s insistence that human language and human relationships (and not technology) are the essential ingredients of any successful collaboration.

Next: Richard Eder reviews “The Fireman’s Wife and Other Stories” by Richard Bausch (Linden Press).