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The ideal size for teams (where technology is not being used in any
way) is 2-8, with an upper limit of around 25. In these smaller groups,
successful collaboration is generally reliant upon (often face-to-face)

social negotiation (discussion) to evolve and guide the development of
the group’s creative output.

In Wiki-style collaborations, there is simply so much information to be
negotiated if people communicate directly that the negotiations would

collapse under their own weight without the mediation of an
administrative/stigmergic platform.

This is not to say that social negotiation (discussion) does not take
place in stigmergic collaborative contexts, but rather that such

negotiations take a back seat in terms of the creative drafting process.
In reality, most (if not all) stigmergic wiki collaborations have
discussions associated with the content being developed, but it is

possible to contribute (to Wikipedia.org, for instance) without
discussing your contribution with others. This does not preclude
discussion in such systems (chat rooms, bulletin boards, email lists),
but such discussions are typically secondary to the objectives of the

overall project.

Strength of Emergence

Complexity theorists draw a distinction between strong and weak
emergence. Simply put, if you can work out what happened after the
event then the Emergence is 'weak'. If you have absolutely no idea

what happened (like consciousness emerging from a bunch of cells)
then it is 'strong'. All emergence in the business world is weak
and can be rationalized ex-post giving the (likely spurious)
impression of understanding what happened.

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