Mobile teams, who spend much of their day on the road, face communication challenges that cannot be solved by web-connected laptops alone. This case study shows how the Intermediate Care Team at DaisyHill Hospital addressed these challenges with a Bioteams approach supported by integrated mobile phone and web "swarm" technology.

Nature has a way of automatically right-sizing a group to tackle the job at hand. Just like the Russian Matryoshka Dolls (dolls within dolls), small groups link into bigger ones, which in turn link into still bigger ones. In this follow-up article to Why penguins have no commanding officer and Did ants invent the perfect system for communicating via mobile technology?, Ken Thompson writing for NESTA explores what we can learn about teamwork and group/community size from nature's most successful teams.

Are you smarter than a goose? Sure you are -- one on one. But when it comes to working efficiently, you and your colleagues can't touch the gaggle. According to author Ken Thompson, geese and other animals that naturally form groups have a lot to teach us about business. In a theory he calls organizational biomimetics, Thompson lays out the principles underlying nature's management strategies. So what can you learn from a bird or an ant? Take a gander. Katharine Gammon at Wired Magazine reports.

Robin Good, as part of his Professional Blogging Series has published an excellent set of 5 short video interview clips of when we met at his office in Rome earlier in the summer to discuss how the bioteams.com blog came about, what was involved in building up its readership, what were the main benefits and what was learned from the whole blogging experience.

It is a natural human trait to believe that we (the species) are the inventors of all clever things. Not so. One of the humbling things that biomimicry teaches us very quickly is that many times Mother Nature has beaten us to it! For example, take one of our proudest achievements: elections and democracy....

What is the best way to introduce bioteaming into any organization or network? I recommend an Action Learning approach which allows you to evolve your own unique take on bioteaming which takes full advantage of the hidden learning and experiences you and your organization already have about ‘natural teams’. Heres an interactive bioteams implementation roadmap to get you started.

To succeed in work environments today, you must be able to work in teams - but they are not your father's teams anymore. Bioteams are the most appropriate ways to think about teams, networks and organizations in today's interconnected world. Nature's teams display four traits that don't naturally seem to occur in organizational teams and that I contend make a huge difference to human performance. Read the full article at THE BPM Institute.

Ken Thompson, author of Bioteams and The Networked Enterprise, gives a 25 minute introduction to bioteams and describes how it can be applied to make social networks, fan groups, virtual communities and business networks more agile, intimate, satisfying and sustainable. The presentation also addresses todays big question - "How do you get engagement in a large group?"

*** STOP PRESS *** Stunning Interactive Poll results from NLAB Social Networks Conference. Q1 Would your work team be better or worse if it organised itself more like your favourite sports team? - Only 7% say it would make things worse! Q2 Does Twitter (and other such tools) distract from work and is it worth it? - Yes it does but Yes it is!

Ken Thompson presented on the topic: "Bioteams: what can we learn from natures social networks" at the NLab Social Networks Conference (19th June 2008) at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

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.

You followed the blog; you listened to the podcasts; you watched the movies; now read the book! “Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Most Successful Designs” is now available from Amazon.

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.

Watch this amazing video “LEONES VS BUFALOS VS COCODRILOS“ of a co-ordinated attack by a pack of lions on a baby buffalo which turns in to a battle of the species with a few big surprises thrown in.

Ken Thompson and Scott Andrews discuss how we can make our teams, groups and communities much more satisfying, more productive and more agile by adopting some simple principles which Mother Nature has successfully evolved over millions of years to organize her teams. To listen to the show click here or to find out more about ARRiiVE: Innovations In Business RADIO SHOW click here

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.

Kare Anderson, journalist and author, has just published an excellent bioteams podcast, Be an Alpha Swarmer? Attract fans. Start movements, on her very popular collaboration blog. The podcast features a 35 minute wide-ranging discussion of practical bioteaming techniques and their real-world applications in various groups.

I am pleased to announce a major upgrade to www.bioteams.com (Team Dynamics, Virtual Collaboration and Bioteaming) with a number of exciting new features to make it much easier to browse, locate and share its nearly 500 articles and essays.