On Collaboration

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a tidal wave of interest around best practices in remote collaboration. But the problems emerging from the crisis are testing team problem-solving on a whole new plane. The problems will require highly complex interdisciplinary collaboration. Scientists and technologists across fields are collaborating on urgently needed innovations in diagnostics and therapy. AI experts are gathering with biologists, demographers and policymakers to harness insights on pandemic contagion and its social impact.

ReD Associates put together this episode of Phenomena to explore what kinds of problems require interdisciplinary collaboration and how teams get it right when experts are coming from radically different world views. Drawing from a recent project with Facebook Reality Labs, we reconvened our research team composed of an anthropologist, cognitive scientist and machine learning expert to share their experiences of learning together and collaborating.