Toward Smarter Collaboration
At the Center for Collaboration Science (CoLab) at Carnegie Mellon University, we are focused on understanding how people work together—and how to help them do it better.
From hospitals to online innovation platforms, and from public services to the financial sector, today’s most important work is done collectively, not alone. Trends toward more professional specialization, technological advancements, and environmental volatility, are making that work both more critical and more complex. To advance an understanding of smarter collaboration, we take an interdisciplinary approach that brings together insights from diverse fields—from psychology, business, and economics, to statistics, engineering, computer science, and more.
Sample of Research Focus Areas
Teams & Technology
How do hybrid and remote work policies affect decision-making, innovation, performance, and the employees themselves? What makes human-AI teaming work?
Complex Team Design
How can organizations get the right people to communicate, in the right way, at the right time? What does it take for multi-organization or multi-agency efforts to succeed?
Conflict & Diversity
How can cross-functional teams thrive when conflict is inherent? What does productive conflict look like?
Team Learning & Innovation
How do teams learn, and quickly? When and how is knowledge transferred across people and projects?
Collective Intelligence
What does it take to build the collective intelligence needed for today’s complex problems? How can AI help?
What We're Thinking About
Our Sponsors
The center’s efforts to advance research on cultivating smarter collaboration depend on generous support from our sponsors and partner organizations:
