Dear Colleagues,
On July 10, 2014, my son Mike will host the grand opening of his innovative Crossmark Collaboration Center located next to Walmart's world headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA. Mike, as the vice president of Innovations and Director of the Crossmark Collaboration Center (CCC), will officially open the Center with representatives from Crossmark, Walmart and numerous potential collaboration partners. The stated function of this innovative business alliance-making facility is to open the information age in marketing services to the best opportunities for successful inter-firm collaboration.
This magnificent facility was the brainchild of Ben Fischer, CEO of Crossmark. The Center is based on a series of game changing successes employing the latest technologies and collaboration theory in practice by Mike Graen both at P & G and Walmart. CCC is armed with the best technology available today and the collaborative climate of honest and open negotiation (bullying will not be tolerated in any form). The theory has been the life work of three generations of Graens. George, Mike's dad, was asked by his PTSD vet father Kelly to help make life more meaningful for employees. George took his father's wish seriously and invented tailor-made methods to discover how working class kids might climb to the middle class and beyond in a single generation.
Mike and his mother, Joni, assisted with this research program and later the family team was joined by the younger son, Marty. Both brothers believed in dad's work and practiced it in their college, MBA studies and employment. Mike worked with P & G, Walmart and Crossmark and Marty with NCR, Compaq, Kodak and Carestream Health. George retired from teaching at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and has written and edited nine research monographs on collaboration research for Information Age Publishing. George's latest book, Millennial Spring (2014) explains the current status of their theory of business collaboration. This theory broke many misguided rules on the way to discovering the true nature of successful business collaboration. This theory will be employed as the Crossmark Collaboration Center fulfills grandad's last wish.
Cheers,
George Graen
References
Millennial Spring: Designing the Future of Organizations. (2014). Edited by Miriam Grace and George Graen, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.