OK, I admit it. I'm a sports junkie. The first thing I do in the morning is read the sports section in the paper, and once or twice a day I glance at ESPN.com to check out the latest scores and rumors. I rarely miss a game of my favorite college basketball team. While working at home I have a game on the TV as background, and I'm a sucker for almost any sports movie. Worst of all, I constantly use sports clichés and metaphors (often mixed) to weigh in on almost everything.  

The thing is, many of the principles that guide me in science were learned in sports. Besides the obvious things like hard work, consistency, awareness, preparation, opportunism, persistence, etc, the one precept that really sticks out is the central role of teamwork. While this is a given in sports, it is not a central tenet of scientific discovery.

It should be. The results brought by teamwork are indisputable, as is the excitement and personal fulfillment. But how do you get scientists to work together? I have pondered this question often during my ten years in industry and sixteen years in academia as a leader and member of different kinds of scientific organizations. Deep discussions I've had with leaders in industry and academia, and not just in the life sciences, always come back to the same dilemma, the tension between the "I" and the "We", and the likelihood of tipping too far to one side or the other. I've concluded that creating a culture of innovative discovery depends critically on achieving the right balance, and developing a value system where this tension is minimized, so that the "I" exists in harmony with the "We".

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