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

Derived 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

In a statement released on Friday, Merlin Entertainments said the announcement came after "months of collaborative work with Freedom for Animals, the Born Free Foundation and PETA, a wild penguin researcher, a veterinarian, and BIAZA".

From BBC • May 29, 2026

“We look forward to working in a collaborative manner to ensure that we listen and respond to some of the concerns that have been expressed,” said Gary Anandasangaree, Canada’s Public Safety Minister.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 27, 2026

This collaborative strategy is known as the One Medicine approach, which encourages the exchange of knowledge between veterinary and medical researchers to improve health outcomes across species.

From Science Daily • May 24, 2026

Both of them are so curious and collaborative, and it helped me to understand I could do that again.”

From Los Angeles Times • May 15, 2026

The quandary deepened in mid-1950, when it became evident that the solution to a vexing technical issue in hydrogen bomb design rested on the collaborative work of Teller and the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik