And what you may also catch a glimpse of is how hard I have to work to get both of them to share the shared space, to relax, to play with their ideas, to listen to each other. Even when both people are friends, even when the technology for their collaboration is present and enabling, there is an art to working together — a subtle, and sometimes profound art — as subtle as the art of listening. It requires that each person let the other person in.

For the two people we were watching trying to work together, their very independence, their very own creative genius proved to be an obstacle to collaboration. In organizations, small and large, there are many more obstacles to collaboration.

Many of them are equally profound and subtle, cultural as well as structural. Others can be traced to things as obvious as incentive systems, which are often disincentives to collaboration.

— from The Art of Collaboration by Bernie DeKoven.

Emphasis mine.