Articles should be concise and should be targeted at a readership with a special interest in the biomaterials area. Personal opinion is as welcome as conclusive proof, when this adds to a constructive debate on the future of biomaterials.
Humans can do it, ants do it and even slime moulds do it.
They collect into communities with a characteristic that the whole is very much greater than the sum of its parts. In all these examples, supply chains of labour, of nutrients and maybe even of ideas allow the synergies and benefits of collaboration to be achieved. It takes only a few minutes in any conference dealing with biomaterials to realise the tag 'multi-disciplinary' truly applies. Rarely do the full set of competencies reside in a single location and collaboration is a key requirement. The most usual answer to this is in the 'personal network' and this is indeed important, as understanding, empathy and trust is a foundation to withstand the multitudes of stresses inevitable in any biomaterials development program.