Our old friend the spider gets a lot of bad press. For example he/she has been used as an example of the weakness of centralised leadership models versus so-called "leaderless organisations" in The Starfish and The Spider. However spiders can teach teams, enterprises and networks two very important lessons: Strategic Readiness and Appropriate Response.

I have to thank Jo Jordan for the idea behind this excellent little crowdbreaker which introduces the bioteams concepts and shows very quickly in a concrete way that it makes perfect sense when you actually think about it.

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!

I am pleased to announce a new version of the Flash-based Bioteams Instant Team Assessment tool which provides an online snapshot of how much a team is operating like a bioteam. Many Thanks to Jo, Chris and others for their very helpful feedback and suggestions.

Support for collaboration is the hot discussion in BPM circles these days, and for good reason. It’s the human-to-human interactions of teams that count when it comes to innovation and agility. ... you and everyone you work with must be able to function in and through internal and multi-company teams, and must also grasp what the latest concept of “team” really means….

I am pleased to announce the release of a new Flash-based Bioteams Instant Team Assessment tool which provides an online snapshot of how much a team is operating like a bioteam by calculating its bioteams footprint across 5 key areas: beliefs, leadership, connectivity, execution and organization.

Janine Benyus, talking at TED, describes biomimicry as learning an idea from an organism and then applying it - the conscious emulation of life's genius. Bioteaming, then, is the biomimicry of social structures- taking ideas from Nature about how groups perform and intra-operate, and applying them to enhance how we humans work together in groups and teams. Doug Philips aka teamite#222* and bioteams guest author muses.

Armed with a few students, a backhoe and a handful of markers, Deborah Gordon digs up ant colonies in the Arizona desert. She asks: How do these chitinous creatures get down to business and even multitask when they need to with no language, memory or visible leadership?

What makes great teams such? Is it just a coincidence that some teams consistently outperform others or is being a high performing team due to specific traits of those who make the team up? Robin Good and Ken Thompson suggest the team's beliefs are the key.

Sometimes the Bee-team is the A-team: the importance of an automatic team swarm response to threats and opportunities.