In this article I suggest that organizational teams, networks and communities who can adapt and adopt the “stop trying to control them” principle exemplified by nature's teams can achieve huge gains in agility and collective intelligence.

With the explosion in social software and the recognition that these types of systems need to reach critical mass to survive and prosper it is amazing that so few people seem to be applying the well-established philosophical principles of living systems (autopoiesis) to design for sustainability.

Much of the foundation of bioteaming is based on the organisation, communications and behavior of social insect societies. The BBC has a wonderful series Life in the Undergrowth narrated by David Attenborough with a whole programme dedicated to Supersocieties and Super-organisms.

Ken Thompson, writing for Insider Knowledge Magazine, in Why Penguins have no commanding officer reveals the two fundamental differences between biological teams and organizational teams and what we can learn from nature about effective teamwork.

In the ground-breaking book Communities Dominate Brands, Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore introduce a new generation of technology users: Generation C (C stands for Community). If you have some Gen-Cs on your team you are ideally placed to take advantage of bioteaming principles and here is how you can spot them.

Team leaders who want their team members to show more initiative and take greater responsibility can learn from the principles of autonomous software agents so I am delighted to republish a bioteams guest essay on “Agents: Technology and Usage” by James Odell which is attached in full as a pdf.

During spring in Denmark, just before sunset, flocks of more than a million European Starlings gather from all corners to create an incredible phenomenon known as The Black Sun. The Black Sun principles of flocking and mass collaboration can also be applied to organisational teams.

The Bioteaming Manifesto is the definitive summary of the key principles of Bioteaming kindly published by ChangeThis. For a free download of the full (34-page) document please click here

Many Thanks to Robert Scoble of Scoble Show fame for producing a brand new 15 minute video interview on the basics of bioteams and how it can be applied in organisational teams.

Many people have been enchanted by the amazing video “The March of the Penguins” and most know that they have no leader. However few people go on to ask the obvious next question “If they have no leader then how do they know where to go?”....