In a press release to promote their upcoming Content and Collaboration Summit 2010 (London, UK, September 15-16) Gartner Research forecast 10 key changes in the nature of work through to 2020 centering around bioteams, swarming and connectivity.

Brainz.org has a very good article which gives 15 excellent examples of designs inspired by nature (biomimicry or biomimetics).

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!

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.

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.

I did some searching with Google books search and Amazon book search and was pleasantly surprised to find that "bioteams or bioteaming" is discussed in over a dozen recent books. You can checkout my Bioteams book here or my latest book The Networked Enterprise (TNE) which describes in detail how to use bioteams to create Virtual Enterprise Networks.

A new area of research called "complexity science" embraces the notion that an ant colony and the human brain, the stock market and Facebook all have something in common. All are complex systems, basically huge networks made up of individual components whose behavior is difficult to predict. Kathleen Ryan O'Connor reports on Bioteams and Research from Binghamton University NY.

A short Bioteams video interview has been published by Bas de Baar on Project Shrink where Bas and I discuss some of the most common questions about bioteams projects such as team member alignment and is there a role for a project manager in a bioteam (Yes!).

In his new book, Dot Cloud: The 21st Century Business Platform, Peter Fingar suggests that if we stick with our current pyramid-style designs of our organizations, we will not be able to meet the growing needs of our communities in the high-change global economy and concludes that the discipline of bioteaming offers a vision of what successful teaming experiences look like in the interconnected world of the 21st century.

I believe that products like Second Life could provide powerful immersive platforms to link together web applications (eg via web services) in much more engaging ways for various collaborative group applications such as team games and business simulations.

In Dot.Cloud business strategy expert Peter Fingar explains the main ideas of cloud computing and what it will mean for both businesses and business models. Peter contends that companies will carry out their work in "the Cloud" instead of in office buildings and deliver their "services" via the Cloud as well. Peter proposes a key role for human interactions in the Cloud, the end of traditional "management" and the rise of self-organizing, self-managed "Bioteams".

Swarms 101 is a short interactive web-based presentation which introduces the basic concept of a Swarm, the key Swarm characteristics (Open v Closed, Star v Peer...) and how Swarms can be combined into powerful "Swarm Communities" through the ability to exist in mulltiple swarms (as Swarm Owner and/or Swarm Users). Includes examples of Swarm Communities in Music, Brands and Public Health.

Swarmteams is about to launch a major new software version offering a 1-stop shop for anyone who needs to engage and empower key networks of customers, consumers, fans or supporters - over any and all channels.

I recently had the privilege of being invited to speak to a NASA audience at their Research Centre in Langley (Virginia) on the topics of Bioteams and The Networked Enterprise. My talk was very nicely reported for NASA News by Jim Hodges.

About 18 months ago I listened to Andrew King give a fascinating lecture in London about his unpublished research into Baboon societies. Andrew explained how in the harsh environment of the Namib Desert dictatorship sometimes works better than democracy. Andrew's ground-breaking work has now been widely published and he kindly sent me some excellent links. There are many parallels with human teams, groups and communities!

A bioteam is an organizational structure in which peers share power and responsibility and each member of the team is a both a leader and a follower. The structure is modeled after a fluid leadership structure found in nature....... read the full article from Whatis?com the IT encyclopedia and learning center.

Swarmteams (www.swarmteams.com), the Bioteams-based multi-channel group messaging system, is now ready to raise its first external investment. The Swarmteams executive team are looking for strategic investment partners (individuals and enterprises) who can add real value to the mission of turning crowds into communities.

A unique reference card for printing on 2-sided A4 (Landscape) which folds into 6 sections - what a "bioteam" is, how to decide if a group needs bioteaming, the 5 bioteams zones with their beliefs/rules, 7 main bioteams techniques, 3 checklists, links to 2 free bioteams tools and links to key foundational material.
A must-have for all bioteams practitioners!