Moneyball for nanoHUB: Theory-Driven and Data-Driven Approaches to Understand the Formation and Success of Software Development Teams

Abstract

The same principle that transformed baseball may hold the key to building more innovative scientific teams. In 2002, Billy Beane changed baseball when he fielded a $41 million baseball team for the Oakland Athletics that successfully competed with the $125 million New York Yankees. We increasingly turn to teams to solve wicked scientific problems from sequencing the human genome to curing cancer. Building scientific dream teams who produce breakthrough innovations at minimal cost is not unlike choosing the players who will go on to win the World Series. Like pre-Beane baseball, much of the selection of scientific dream teams currently rests on an assessment of the caliber of the individual scientists, with far less attention paid to the relationships that gel the team together, and the factors that determine how those pivotal relationships come about.