Is a well-functioning team more usefully thought of in analogy to a Racehorse, a Plant, or a Bacterial Colony?
----
AlistairCockburn wrote, "...a well-formed team is NOT a plant, from which one can take a cutting
and transplant....It is more like a racehorse."

BillBarnett warns, "Milan Kundera got it right when he wrote 'A Metaphor is a dangerous thing...' " I like the racehorse analogy, although it suggests an unpleasant outcome should the team, say, break an ankle. You can't take cuttings from a well-formed team, but it can send out emissaries to instruct, infect, and surreptitiously convert other teams to it's practices. Kind of like a bacterial colony? Speaking of which, have you read _Global Brain_ by Howard Bloom? Lots of interesting things for us to learn from bacteria!

----
One could do an EconomicComparison but the SimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork when it comes to SolarSystemColonization might be, considering the SpaceShuttle is soon up for retirement, would be fit them with IonEngine s and deploy them in orbit around the Moon, Mars and Venus. Then use the
OldSchool Gemini and Apollo technology to get to them. From there simple landers could let humans at least land on them and get back quickly,
be there now, say we were there, in our lifetime. As technology and CongressionalReviews progress, it might even be conceivable to push the
InternationalSpaceStation out to, say Jupiter, ReUse the existing designs of Skylab, Soyuz and Mir to populate the SolarSystem quickly, create
SelfGoverning colonies. Functioning as a Team, yet observing CouplingAndCohesion principles.
----
See also CopyAndPasteReuse