Teambuilding 2.0
Stumble It!Many company executives are now questionning the value of 'traditional' forms of teambuilding such as executive retreats or staff games (e.g. Executive team building: stop wasting their time). Recently I ran across a New York technnology company GoCrossOffice pioneering a more novel approach....
GoCrossOffice integrate both virtual and physical elements into their team games. I am sure GCO are not the only player in this space as it looks like a very promising future market area. The GCO website references a number of independent research reports on the use of gaming for non-educational purposes by IBM, and Forrester.
GCO was developed by students at Yale University as a "next-generation teambuilding tool" and differs from traditional teambuilding exercises by bundling training with a fun game that spans the virtual and real worlds.
Teams meet in the real world to collaborate and discuss strategy around a game that takes place virtually. By cutting out off-site trips, companies can save time and money and build more structure into their teambuilding.
For a young company GCO have some impressive clients including the likes of Google and Vivendi - heres a case study from their website if you want to find out more
About Ken ThompsonKen Thompson is an expert practitioner in the area of bioteaming, swarming, virtual enterprise networks, virtual professional communities and virtual teams and has published two landmark books:
Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Best Designs
The Networked Enterprise: Competing for the future through Virtual Enterprise Networks
Ken writes the highly popular bioteams blog which has over 500 articles on all aspects of bioteams (aka organizational biomimicry) - in other words how human groups can learn from nature's best teams.Ken is also founder of an exciting European technology company Swarmteams which provides unique patent-pending bioteaming technologies for all shapes and sizes of groups, social networks, business clusters, virtual/mobile communities and enterprises. Swarmteams enables groups to be more responsive and agile by fully integrating their mobile phones and the web with bioteam working techniques.
The latest Swarmteams implementation is SwarmTribes which helps social object owners (e.g. musicians/bands, sports teams, film-makers) and good cause sponsors (e.g. Volunteering, Environmental, Public Health) to form unique collaborations with their fans/supporters for mutual benefit.
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Mobile phone users: are we now cyborgs
The term cyborg is used to designate an organism which is a mixture of organic and synthetic parts so designed to enhance its abilities via technology. William Mitchell a professor at MIT Media Lab believes that through our mobile devices we are all becoming mobile cyborgs and its for the better. In his book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City which he discusses in an interview with James Harkin Mitchell describes how the new communications technologies have overlaid our city spaces with central nervous systems connecting us into the wireless ether via our mobile devices which act as umbilical cords to anchor us into the information society's digital infrastructure.
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We can help you to organize your team building activity in Italy
I guess I'd get more excited about the team building value if it was structured to support actual team projects in which people are involved - at work or in civic or other parts of their lives
In this dire economic 2009 that would be most welcome
- another fan of Ken
Many Thanks Kare - I know I learn so much more if its in the context of my real projects, opportunities and challenges.
I am sure companies are happy to know that they can conduct team building activities without spending too much. Other team buiding events organizer might soon develop this kind of strategy as well.
Kate
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