Patent ID: 8346866

Claim:
A method of establishing subgroups of participants within a group of participants, comprising: establishing a profile for each participant in the group, said profile including contribution attributes and preference attributes specific to said participant; for each possible pair of participants in the group, combining the contribution attributes of one participant in the pair with preference attributes of the other participant in the pair to generate, for each participant, a contribution score indicative of the overall contribution the participant could provide to the other participant in the pair, a benefit score indicative of the overall benefit the participant could receive from the other participant in the pair, and a mutual benefit score combining the benefit scores of both participants in the pair; and assigning participants to subgroups as a function of participant contribution and mutual benefit scores, wherein assigning participants to subgroups as a function of participant contribution and mutual benefit scores further comprises: identifying a first participant having the highest contribution score and a second participant having the highest mutual benefit score between itself and said first participant; assigning said first participant and said second participant to a group; identifying another participant having the highest mutual benefit score between itself and participants already assigned to said group and assigning said another participant to said group; and repeating the preceding operation for one or more additional participants.