Dave Snowden talks about trios, a concept similar to pair programming where a small diverse team of three people explore ideas and make prototypes. A trio links roles in inter-threaded patterns to see what is possible. The trio needs to have diversity across specialisms and generations to increase the likelihood of novel ideas.
The idea is to have 15 – 20 trios working in parallel. The outcomes are then sorted and selected and put into a traditional design process (the example used in the talk is software design). The approach differs from a traditional consulting project where a small team of experts create prototypes within tight project plans. For the right problem it may make sense to have many people tackling the issue, but you would need willing clients to go with this approach. Nonetheless I’m becoming more interested in distributed problem solving vs. expert problem solving.
The topic is introduced at 25:13.