Complexity and collaboration

As appreciation of the power of collaborations has grown, researchers have turned their attention to the challenges of ever more complex problems. Researchers with successful collaborative experiences have been developing multi- team networks and larger systems or expertise and resources to collectively address the most complex and intractable global issues. Examples include multi-team system coordination in space missions, biosphere reserves, or green infrastructure projects in cities. Some argue that the dynamics operating in such systems face unique challenges that cannot be addressed merely by understanding the dynamic of ordinary collaborations. Others would ask whether there was such a thing as an ordinary collaboration! Everything presented so far in this book can be applied to the design, development, management, and maintenance of complex adaptive multi- team systems.

It was in the late 2000s that researchers and academic administrators began attending to the complexities of research teams and collaboration. Increases in the number of multi-authored papers reflected the rapid growth of cross- disciplinary collaboration, particularly of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary problem- solving. These developments led to shifts in thinking about how to prepare researchers to participate effectively in complex collaborations. Research organizations, funding agencies, academic associations, and academics themselves recognized the need to better understand team dynamics and the processes of collaboration, especially with the growth of collaborations that cross the boundaries of institutions and nations, not to mention different disciplines. Two dramatic examples of the potential power of international boundary- crossing collaborations include identifying the cause of the SARS outbreak in 2003 and developing successful vaccines in record time during the 2020 COVID- 19 pandemic.