The 15 Coolest Cases of Biomimicry

I am pleased to launch the YouNetFast blog/online resource which is a unique and up-to-date resource on leading, facilitating and benefiting from collaborative business networks. YouNetFast is the third website in my YouWorkFast series.

I am pleased to launch the YouTeamFast blog/online resource which pulls together Twenty One of my best techniques for assessing, mobilising, operating and improving teams and is the second website in my YouWorkFast series.

I am delighted to give bioteams.com readers a heads-up that I am launching www.youbidfast.com showing how any organization or even individual can turbo-charge their business development and marketing results by exploiting the latest best-in-class (and TOTALLY FREE) software in areas such as blogging, social media, CRM and web monitoring. Please check it out and let me know what you think!

The most common approach to business collaboration (Planned Collaboration) involves prior analysis of the participants to try to identify shared interests in collaboration (e.g. as complementary players in a collaborative supply network). Another more radical approach (Serendipitous Collaboration) involves putting a random mix of companies in a room and seeing what develops. Guess what - Serendipitous Collaboration works really well provided you have a good process for uncovering synergies!

When you are leading or facilitating any kind of collaborative business network or venture you need to know that these are very different kinds of team than you encounter inside organisations. These are "bioteams" so-called because each team has a life of its own and the normal team "command and control" simply does not work. To be successful you need to know The Ten Rules for herding cats!

Robin Good, at MasterNewMedia has produced a comprehensive review of 10 Web-based Mindmapping Services which are categorised against various criteria with a useful summary paragraph for each service.

One of the hardest things for a group of companies to do is to find some quick-win low-risk area where they can build trust by working together BEFORE they embark on something major. The Collaborative Opportunities Dashboard Tool allows companies to quickly explore a dozen practical ways to work together with the goal of meaningful results in 12 weeks or less.

I am sharing my set of powerful web-based interactive business simulations with their real-time graphs, dashboards, sliders, guages and avatars. I developed these over a number of years using the excellent ithink simulation environment as essential tools to support what-if analysis, management learning games, experiential learning, balanced business scorecards and scenario planning.

In the summer of 2009 I had the privilege of speaking to an audience of NASA scientists and researchers at the NASA Research Centre in Langley, Virginia on the topic of The Networked Enterprise and Bioteams in the context of major engineering and scientific enterprises. NASA have very kindly allowed me to publish the full video of my presentation here.

I had a great chat on the good, the bad and the ugly of organizational meetings with Phil Daoust of The Guardian newspaper as part of a excellent in-depth article which appeared today in G2 (April 23) entitled "How to have a meeting". Here are the online links to it:

A recent research report by University of Queensland Business School (Australia) academics Tim Kastelle and John Steen suggests that large enterprises can make major gains in productivity by investing in their internal communication networks. This resonates strongly with the concepts of bioteaming according to practitioner Max Bhanabhai.

One of the deadliest invisible killers in teams is the perception of unfairness: that some are rewarded beyond which their contribution merits. "Fairness perception" is a massively important but poorly understood team concept, which even extends beyond human teams into the animal kingdom. Here is how to successfully manage it.

IT in Canada report on the Top Ten Collaboration Trends for 2010 as seen by Barry O'Sullivan, Senior Vice President of Cisco Voice Technology Group. Barry expects to see more things like Intercompany Collaboration (3), Connected Device Proliferation (7) and Customer Collaboration (10) - all of which resonate strongly with The Bioteaming Manifesto.

There are 10 really critical foundations to make a Virtual Enterprise Network a success: 1) Communities and Project Dynamic, 2) Network Ground Rules, 3) Group Membership Structures, 4) Practical Group Structures, 5) Complete set of Network Roles, 6) Appropriate Legal Frameworks, 7) Practical Exchange Model, 8) Viable Stakeholder Ecosystem, 9) Realistic Network Development Model, 10) Proven Development Road Map. This article offers an introduction to these ten foundations.

A unique reference card for printing on 2-sided A4 (Landscape) which folds into 6 sections showing the key priorities and resources in developing The Networked Enterprise through its 7 maturity stages with the 8 key techniques and their checklists. A must-have for all group collaboration coaches, leaders and practitioners!