Teamwork in animals, robots, and humans

We have considered what it means to work as a team in several fields: robotics, management, and sociobiology. We have demonstrated that a single, generic definition of teamwork-a task that necessarily requires multiple individuals to perform different subtasks simultaneously-applies in vastly different social systems; in other words, we suggest that teamwork is a fundamental aspect of cooperative activity in highly social systems. We have detailed many new examples of teams, especially in non-human animals, and also demonstrated a number of generic lessons about teams, especially in our sections in which we draw attention to a number of misconceptions about teamwork (Section VIII) and in which we specify how one objectively and rigorously tests for teamwork and distinguishes it from related phenomena such as groupwork (Section VII). © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.