collaborative

American  

[kuh-lab-uh-rey-tiv, -er-uh-tiv] / kəˈlæb əˌreɪ tɪv, -ər ə tɪv /

adjective

1. characterized or accomplished by cooperation or working together.

   collaborative methods;

   a collaborative report.

2. relating to or involving several organizations, groups, people, etc., working together for a common purpose.

   My doctor is now part of a collaborative practice.

   Modern policing is trending toward collaborative law enforcement, where police officers work hand-in-hand with community leaders and neighborhood associations.

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noun

1. a group of people working together for a common purpose.

   The collaborative of doctors was able to gather important new information about the illness by pooling anonymized patient data.

Usage

What does collaborative mean? Collaborative is an adjective that describes an effort in which people work together (that is, one in which they collaborate). Collaborative is often used in a positive context to refer to two or more parties successfully working together on a goal or shared project. It’s also increasingly used as a noun for an organized joint effort. Example: The groundbreaking new album was a collaborative effort by the two musicians, who usually have very different styles.

Other Word Forms

• uncollaborative
  adjective
• collaboratively
  adverb
• uncollaboratively
  adverb

Etymology

Origin of collaborative

collaborate + -ive

Explanation

The adjective collaborative describes something accomplished by working together with others. With a collaborative effort, a big job can be completed in very little time. When you collaborate, you cooperate, or join forces, with other people — working on a project, brainstorming ideas, even assigning responsibility for who will do what. So something that has these qualities is collaborative. From playing in a band to making a movie, feeding the students at a school to building a house, when you work toward a shared goal, it's collaborative.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

collaborative

The collaborative research team, led by scientists from Duke University School of Medicine, created a first-of-its-kind therapy designed to restore the normal length of the mRNA that produces SPSB1.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 26, 2026

It is a distinction that matters: Automation can put people out of work, but collaborative technologies leverage workers’ expertise, making them even more valuable.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026

Through its multidisciplinary and collaborative approach, the group aims to produce research with practical clinical applications.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 18, 2026

He wrote: "I am a strong supporter of electoral reform, partly because I believe it will enable the change to a more collaborative politics, and one that is less about point-scoring and more about problem-solving."

From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026

It is, however, worth mentioning Parisian composer Etienne Loulie’s startlingly forward- looking collaborative studies with the ‘father’ of the science of acoustics, Joseph Sauveur, in the 1690s.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall