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.
Participation is encouraged if an activity adds value and value is proportional to participation.
It is rather like selling the first telephone. Somebody had to buy it. Mark Twain famously noted that there are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics. 100 years before Mark Twain made this comment, at the end of the 18th century, average life expectancy was 35-40 years. Today it is about 75 years.