Cooperation is when a group of people work together for a common objective. The goal is usually specific and narrowly-defined, so that cooperative parties don't really have to change their individual ways of doing things. For example, a drug dealer may cooperate with law enforcement to get a lighter punishment. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the criminal would work with the authorities on a long-term basis, essentially changing who he (or she, for that matter) is or how he works.
Collaboration is when a cohesive group of people work together for a common goal. It is a kind of cooperation that generally involves sharing responsibilities, learning, and resources, transforming participants' individual approaches for the common goal. In other words, a collaborative relationship is usually more closer and comprehensive than a cooperative relationship. Take a look at the following examples:
- The United Nations Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission concluded that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza was unlawful because of the humanitarian crisis there, and that the military raid on the flotilla was brutal and disproportionate. The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded by saying the Human Rights Council had a “biased, politicized and extremist approach.” The Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza, praised the report and called for those involved in the raid to be tried. Israel refused to cooperate with the panel, but is working with a separate United Nations group that is examining the incident. (AP World Briefing, September 22, 2010): Here, you can't replace "cooperate" with "collaborate" because Israel doesn't have to transform itself to work with the panel.
- A novel collaboration between design and geoscience has led to the groundbreaking discovery of what may be the earliest known form of animal life.Bradley Samuels, one of the five principals of Situ Studio in Brooklyn, a firm that specializes in design and fabrication, and Adam Maloof, a Princeton University geosciences professor, met in high school, where they were ski buddies. Despite their different career paths, both men are visual thinkers and realized that the tools and methods of their respective “trades” could be used to expand each other’s worlds. Their joint effort began a few years ago, when Maloof was working on a project involving a meteor crater and recognized that the digital technology that Situ’s designers use to visualize data could be used to map the crater...For Situ Studio, the most exciting aspect of this collaboration is that we were able to successfully employ knowledge developed within an architectural practice to help solve problems in an entirely different field by applying design tools to spatial problems on a completely different scale,” Samuels explains. (New York Times Style Magazine, September 2, 2010): Here, collaboration is a better word choice than cooperation, because the two presumably disparate fields changed their ways of doing things for this project, and shared lessons and methodology in doing so.
