Elements of Collaboration for November

By Peter CallesenRound-up of collaboration ideas spreading this month. 

+ Superstar deaths in science and their teams decreased collaborative efforts.

+ Tribes and how collaboration with leaders can ‘nudge’ people up and down the 5 Tribal Stages.

+ Bioteaming Manifesto and what teams can gain from Mother Nature’s tips.

+ Collaboration and you/your companies identity online.  

 

How important is collaboration in scientific laboratories? A new paper by Pierre Azoulay, Joshua Graff Zivin, and Jialan Wang* studied what happens to research productivity when an academic “superstar” dies while they’re still actively engaged in scientific research. A superstar is a brilliant scientist who teams up with others to collaboratively conduct research and who co-authors with other scientists.

The researchers analyzed the coauthors of 137 eminent life scientists. On average, each superstar had 73 coauthors. (That number alone is astonishing, and shows how collaborative modern science is.)

Following the death of the superstar, his or her colleagues suffer a quality-adjusted decline in productivity of 8% to 18%. The authors found that this decline was lasting. Furthermore, the closer you collaborated with the superstar, the more your productivity declined.

Read the entire summary by Keith Sawyer. 

 

TED Video about Tribes and how 120 people can get things done:

David Logan talks about the five kinds of tribes that humans naturally form — in schools, workplaces, even the driver’s license bureau. By understanding our shared tribal tendencies, we can help lead each other to become better individuals. He discusses the tribal stages and how individuals can only hear one level above and below their current state. Leaders can nudge people up to next level. 

Will your tribes change the world?

Although getting a little bit old, the foundation is forever. Ken Thompson and Robin Good examine why today’s virtual teams have yet to realize their full potential. They could learn a lot from Mother Nature’s teams. Read the Manifesto at ChangeThis.  

As the web of the Internet begins to define our web of influence, it is critical to track your online reach. Over $3 million raised by ATTENTIO just to provide a ‘comprehensive real-time insight into consumer behaviour and attitudes’ will soon be able to track our collaborative ability online- through a simple dashboard. Attentio’s tagline is “what the world says.” They mask this as ‘consumer insight,’ and ‘brand management,’ but we will all be online brands in a few years, some working collaboratively together, others lost to the sea of anonymity. 

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