The bioteams collaboration between Ken Thompson and Robin Good has produced knowledge that should be considered in the rapidly changing environment of using collaboration to get results.

Photo credit: Jeremy Henderson

Having spent a great amount of resource on the topic, my own views of virtual teams have evolved. While not necessarily in (or not in) the direction of the bioteam concept, as I understand it, my view could be complementary.

For your consideration is a set of working contexts for which virtual teams might or might not be a valid approach, so to speak.....

The team is the perfect playing field for how problems are solved, how decisions get made, and how core work gets done.

Unfortunately, it is also a misnomer for all sorts of group behavior involving anyone from politicians to executives to laborers to warriors.

So, I am setting a context of ad-hoc teams created for the purpose of building organizational (enterprise) performance.

I hope that is narrow enough.

Let's start by hacking "entrepreneur" into its parts, and use the hackneyed roots as a new word; preneur. From it we will (re)create a set of comparable terms.

1. Entrepreneur: (From several definitions) A risk-taker who has the skills and initiative to establish a business. What I don't really like about the definition is that it doesn't address the normal assumption that an entrepreneur is usually a person who starts from one core of knowledge or business and starts a new entity from that base, generally with a significant personal risk. Because this definition does not generally suggest a team environment of any kind, unless the entrepreneur is the team leader, it is hard for me to envision an entrepreneurial team.

2. Intrapreneur: Gifford Pinchot created this label nearly 20 years ago, referring to risk takers inside organizations, who created sub-businesses from the core of the organization. These people are your traditional “out-of-the-box” internals. Intrapreneurs tend to be at less personal risk than entrepreneurs, except that they are subject to organizational politics and retribution. The team model to best promote intrapreneurs might be virtual in a global situation, but is more likely the traditional task force.

Here is where things might get more interesting.....

3. Interpreneur: This team creates new ventures across organizations utilizing complementary resources. How is this different from a joint-venture? The area of sharp contrast is that an interpreneurial venture will have ownership at the operating team level, and their obligation will be to offer a ROI specified by the “parents”. In order to stay off multiple “corporate radars”, the teams will have to have a clear set of principles and boundaries that everyone will follow. These factors are subtle, but important, and the potential/need for establishing virtual teams here is dramatic.

4. Extrapreneur: There is huge potential when you create a new entity which is characterized by:

1. having an open agenda

2. spreading its interests across organizations or systems

3. keeping wide an vague boundaries

4. and with a mission to create value from separate but complementary competencies

We are now demonstrating a new level of risk for the “parents” to allocate.

You are risking capital, financial and intellectual. For this reason, extra is the prefix I prefer over inter. So my definition includes exploration outside of the organization core competencies and outside the boundaries of the organization. Here it is where the concept of virtual team is quite important, and the potential for bioteams becomes operationally relevant.

5. Contrapreneur: This is the home for the true radical thinker, organizational mutant, and corporate heretic. Using its own resources, the contrapreneurial portion of an organization sets out to independently challenge its own foundation.

The environment that must exist here is one of absolute teamwork, trust, and communication; things only visionary leadership can promote. This is not a place for fair-weather ideologues.

In order to reach a truly compelling vision, we will have to challenge every one of our assumptions, question the void, and reward those who force us to shed our baggage.

Here above, I have attempted to describe the playing field from which the essence of virtual teams may be soon experienced.

My view is that the best opportunities will come from those organizations that are small enough to respond, but robust enough to take some risk.

Ray Symmes
Principal, Image5, LLC
www.image5.net
ray[at]image5.net

N.B.: I won't get into how I have gained my own understanding about how organizations operate; it has taken over 50 years to get where I am, and a statement of qualifications only serves the purpose of letting the reader decide to read. Let's save time by my confidently stating that I have the competence, commonality, propriety, and intent that it takes to have a reasonable right to a professional view on organization systems and development. Take it, leave it, and decide for yourself.