Wired report (Feb 06) in ‘Geeks in Toyland’ that Lego fully understands the power of customer co-invention by inviting leading Mindstorms enthusiasts to join the Lego R&D Team. See also “Customer collaboration: exploiting the Hawthorne Effect”.

The cultures of organisations and teams can be colour coded according to Jerry Connor and Lee Sears authors of “Why Work is Weird”. Red is achievement oriented, Yellow is people focused and Blue values Professional Expertise.

Hernando de Soto, Peruvian author of The Mystery of Capıtal, speaking at the 14th National Quality Congress ın Istanbul, (November 16, 2005), Turkey shared some very interesting research findıngs from the University of Michigan on the 'culture of trust' in different countries.

The 7 secrets for conducting the perfect collaborative operational team meeting.

Avoiding the most common pitfalls which kill brainstorm sessions.

Seven tips for running 'perfect brainstorm' meetings whether you are all in the same room or not.

In his unique book Dialogue and the art of thinking together William Issacs introduces the Four-Player System originally developed by David Kantor. This is a very important technique for supporting real collaborative thinking in teams.

Way back in the 1930’s researchers from Harvard Business School were running employee feedback research on various proposed innovations in their working conditions on behalf of the telecoms giant Western Electric (now Lucent). The results were quite amazing: they had discovered the Hawthorne Effect.

There are many ways to analyse dysfunctional teams in organisations such as deficiencies in trust, absence of shared objectives, poor co-operative working practices or inappropriate leadership styles/models. However taking a purely biological perspective opens up exciting new possibilities for really transforming these teams performance.

Credit to Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline for identifying an interesting historical book, Robert's Rules of Order, originally written in 1896 and proposing a set of rules for conducting Fair and Orderly Meetings & Conventions. Many of Robert's Rules would seem to apply to today's virtual meetings too.