We humans are social creatures, and have socialized, worked, and otherwise collaborated in both small and large groups for thousands of years. Many of these groups or teams have collaborated to achieve great feats for the good of all mankind, feats including building the great pyramids, circumnavigating the globe, establishing new nations, building the world's first flying machine, winning world wars, producing new medical treatments, sending a man to the moon, to name a few. Pick any great achievement and the odds are that there is a great team behind it. All this suggests that the future of the world depends on the work of great teams.
The present inventors have recognized that there are at least three problems that are inhibiting formation of more great teams.
The first problem is that many teams fail or underperform because of poor interactions between group members and/or because one or more group members lacked essential attributes needed for the group to succeed at whatever mission it takes on. The problem is rampant and generally stems from the fact that teams are built largely using human mental processes. Which are heavily influenced or completely dictated by traditional organizational or social hierarchies; inherent or implicit social, racial, gender, ethnic, or other conscious and unconscious biases within team organizers; and an inability of team organizers to objectively process real data. Wherever these failures occur they are not only costly in terms of lost time and money of businesses and other organizations relying on team performance, but also costly in terms of the wasted effort and emotional stress on team members who joined the teams to achieve something bigger than they could do alone.
The second team formation problem recognized by the present inventors is in the context of education, for example within universities, colleges, high schools, and so forth. In this context, many teams are formed for group projects and study groups, etc. The groups are typically small in number and formed during class in rapid ad hoc ways with consideration of only a few of the many relevant variables. For example, teams for group projects are often based largely on seating proximity or alphabetical order, resulting in widely variant team efficacy. Moreover, students enrolled in any given class also constitute a team. These classroom teams are typically self-organized by students or school administrators based on teacher or scheduling preferences, ignoring numerous individual student traits that affect the entire group learning experience within every class.
The third problem recognized by the present inventors is related to formation of teams or groups in the context of temporary events, such as conferences and conventions, where hundreds or thousands of people may come together to learn or confer around a particular topic, such as education, healthcare, or technology. Many of the participants come not only to learn from speakers at these events, but also to meet new people and form new relationships that can lead to professional and personal collaborations. In most of these conferences and conventions, the peer-to-peer interactions are largely serendipitous, that is, uncoordinated in any systematic or intelligent way around particular user interests or desires, leaving participants to rely on ad hoc introductions and happenstance or to generally fend for themselves in coordinating advantageous meetings. As a result, many of the participants miss out on opportunities to further leverage their investment in money, time, and energy to attend conferences and conventions.
Beyond these problems in organizational, educational, and event team or group formation contexts, the present inventors also recognize that, in broader terms, how well we get along as humans at every level—within friendships, partnerships, and local, national, and international communities—depends on our collective capacity to collaborate and work effectively. While the internet has powered unprecedented interconnectivity, global communications, and informational sharing, it has also exponentially amplified our capacity to behave according to implicit and explicit human biases at every level of interaction, giving rise to insular social, economic, and political echo chambers that regard each other as enemies to oppose rather than friends to commune with. This insularity breeds increasing rigidity in thought and behavior that threaten our capacities not only to understand each other and live peacefully together, but also to collaborate with sufficient diversity to address our grand global challenges.
Accordingly, the present inventors have recognized a need for better ways of bringing people together into small groups or teams to achieve desired objectives.