Institute For The Future

A small-scale example of Open Health?

This excerpt from an article in The Scientist reminded me of some of the Open Health concepts we have been discussing:

For most of biology, . . . oral communication is the dominant way to transmit knowledge, with unappreciated side effects. It is well known that the best way to make rapid progress in a field is to have a big laboratory with many postdocs. Besides the advantage of having a large pool of relatively cheap labor, there is a huge advantage to being able to share and discuss relevant information with a large group working in the same area of research. Achieving a "critical mass" of investigators working and talking in a laboratory is essential for achieving rapid progress in a complex new area of research. Small scientific conferences, too, can be an exceedingly useful way to learn a new area of research or catch up on current happenings in your own field, all via oral communication.

Of course, there is nothing new about a lab full of post-docs. But think of it as a microcosm of open collaboration among scientists. Consider the observation about the benefit of having a large group of people contributing to finding a solution to a research question (crowdsourcing). Would this environment benefit if its participants had the future skill of mobbability (the ability to work in large groups) rather than a propensity for flying solo? Does this quote touch on the advantage of tapping into the collective intelligence of a network?

 

Perhaps this is a stretch, perhaps not. What do you think?