Collaborative Intelligence

PREFACE

It was not an altogether comfortable meeting. My colleagues and I were huddled with our government sponsor to review progress on what we had come to call the “Group Brain” research project. We had completed a number of studies that explored some provocative parallels between brains (which are systems of interdependent neural modules) and groups (which are systems of interdependent members). The findings so far were intriguing, but we had not yet found a way to bring what we were learning to bear on the problem that most interested our sponsor—namely, how best to design and lead the diversity of teams that operate within the U.S. intelligence community.

Then Stephen Kosslyn, a cognitive neuroscientist and co-principal investigator on the ...