As a follow up to my last post, I want to share with you some further thoughts on my presentation on the “Science of Team Science” last week in Washington, DC.  Team collaboration has been part of team science for a century. It’s not about “if” but about “how” for team science to happen, and happen well. Fortunately, there are good resources on how team science can be done well.

Teamwork outside of science is worth exploring, particularly in the fields of technology, sports, architecture, and in literature, to name a few. Collaborative team science incorporates a variety of perspectives, and it’s the tension between these differences and how they are coordinated that lead to innovation and new discoveries, not only in research but in clinical practice and education.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with the panel on team science in DC. Here is a great resource from the NIH Office of the Ombudsman on collaboration and team science, a field guide:

http://ombudsman.nih.gov/collaborationTS.html

I also want to share Amy Edmondson’s article, “Teamwork on the Fly,” from the Harvard Business Review earlier this month:

http://hbr.org/2012/04/teamwork-on-the-fly/ar/1

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on why some research teams succeed while others do not.