Belbin sees Bioteams as the next step. Dr R Meredith Belbin, regarded as the father of "team-role" theory and one of the worlds foremost experts on teams predicts that we will evolve into bioteam forms. In his book "The Coming Shape of Organisation" Belbin picks out five observations human teams need to learn from "a diminutive masterclass" of social insects such as bees, ants and termites.

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Beliefs are the fuel which can really energise bioteams

There is one, often neglected area, which a team needs to address as part of a bioteaming strategy if it wants to be exceptionally successful - team member beliefs.

Nature has a way of automatically right-sizing a group to tackle the job at hand. Just like the Russian Matryoshka Dolls (dolls within dolls), small groups link into bigger ones, which in turn link into still bigger ones. In this follow-up article to Why penguins have no commanding officer and Did ants invent the perfect system for communicating via mobile technology?, Ken Thompson writing for NESTA explores what we can learn about teamwork and group/community size from nature's most successful teams.

As part of the bioteams practitioners network I plan to develop some content only available to registered members. By popular request the first item will be a unique members-only Bioteams Reference Card. If you would like to have one of these Bioteams reference cards please register your email here.