Fritjof Capra says organisations are not just like living systems - they are living systems! In his latest book, The Hidden Connections, Fritjof Capra, acclaimed physicist and author of the Web of Life and the Tao of Physics, challenges us to go beyond the metaphor and see to what extent human organisations can literally be understood as living systems.

Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK

Could a virtual team have a million members? Recent developments in mass collaboration, distributed computing and the wisdom of crowds suggest the answer might be yes.

Richard Conniff in his excellent paper, The limits of the alpha male, gives an excellent introduction to self-organizing behaviour in flocks of birds, termites, red deer, whooper swans and gorillas.

Ants interact using a system known as pheromones, involving sending 'chemical messages' to their community through smell and taste. It is also one of the oldest and most sophisticated forms of group communication on the planet with many features today's mobile and virtual teams would die for!