Collaboration Nation

Book excerpt: How government operates is going through a revolution that will result in an estimated $3 trillion of new business opportunities for private enterprise. Cities are outsourcing functions as mundane as parking garages; public-private partnerships are forming to replace aging bridges and other infrastructure projects; and government at all levels is looking to private enterprise to streamline operations and invent solutions to stubborn problems. Governments at all levels have to rethink how they deliver services and what services can be more efficiently delivered in collaboration with private enterprise. Nabers, who served for more than a decade as a statewide executive, pulls back the curtain on what makes government officials tick, the practical and political cross-currents that are unique challenges to doing business with government, and how to bridge the cultural divide between public officials and corporate executives who live in different worlds, speak different languages, and have distinctly different ways of doing business.