Effective altruism

Ingredients for creating disruptive research teams This post tries to answer the question of what qualities make some research teams more effective than others. I was particularly interested in learning more about “disruptive” research teams, i.e. research teams that have an outsized impact on (1) the research landscape itself (e.g. by paving the way for new fields or establishing a new paradigm), and/or (2) society at large (e.g. by shaping technology or policy)

I looked at the two most comprehensive and rigorous academic studies on productive research teams I could find after a shallow review of the available literature (one literature review, Bland & Ruffin (1992), and one meta-analysis, Hülseger, Anderson & Salgado (2009)). Unfortunately, I could not find similarly comprehensive studies of disruptive research teams in particular. I complemented this with seven case studies of research teams I picked based on my own non-systematic judgment that they have been particularly disruptive. Research seems to have become increasingly important within the effective altruism community. In the past few years, GPI was founded, FHI started growing significantly, and Open Phil is expanding its research capacity. Will MacAskill even called effective altruism a “research program”. From this perspective, we should be both interested in creating new fields of research, or at least substantially influencing existing ones, as well as impacting society

These are the RAND Corporation, the Sante Fe Institute, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Bell Labs, Skunk Works, the Los Alamos Laboratory, and the partnership of Kahneman & Tversky.

The following are my key findings based on this research:

Particularly disruptive research teams always seem to contain a significant number of excellent researchers and even those who are not brilliant are very capable. Teams seem to benefit from cognitive diversity but not demographic diversity. Disruptive research teams seem to benefit from a purposeful vision that describes the kind of change they want to affect in the world. While more concrete goals are probably helpful, they seem difficult to set in this context. Leaders likely have an outsized impact on how productive and disruptive a research group is. In almost all cases, relevant research expertise seems to required for such a role. For some teams, a second administrative leadership role seems to be helpful for securing resources and managing external relationships. Research teams seem more likely to realize their full disruptive potential if the researchers do not have to do anything but research and have easy access to all the resources they need. Individual researchers in disruptive teams seem to thrive when given a large degree of autonomy, i.e., when they’re allowed to pursue projects and collaborations as they see fit. Instead of imposing metrics or incentives, it seems to work best to give them considerable freedom to work outside of usual incentive structures. To facilitate internal communications outside of formal structures, teams seem to benefit from shared spaces that allow for these exchanges to occur. Establishing a shared physical space that encourages interaction seems to be most important. Psychological safety, i.e., the feeling that voicing controversial ideas or dissent will not cause abandonment or loss of status, seems to be an important factor for making interactions between researchers particularly fruitful. It’s not clear to me how exactly this can be achieved. Disruptive research teams seem to be fairly small, probably such that team members still know each other sufficiently well for them to feel comfortable voicing controversial ideas and dissent. I’d suspect this to be less than 15 people, but would not be very surprised if this was number was around 100 after all. Having and executing an impactful theory of change for how research findings translate into real-world impact seems to be important. High-quality communication with external stakeholders seems to matter. High-intensity in-person exchange with people working on similar problems seems to be most valuable. Once salaries reach market rate, praise, recognition, and perceiving one’s work to have an impact seem to be more relevant as rewards. After discussing the key findings, I go on to list learnings for my own organization and review the considered evidence in more detail.

Esta publicación (es decir posteo) intenta responder a la pregunta de qué cualidades hacen que algunos equipos de investigación sean más efectivos que otros. Me interesó particularmente aprender más sobre los equipos de investigación "disruptivos", es decir, los equipos de investigación que tienen un gran impacto en (1) el panorama de la investigación en sí (por ejemplo, allanando el camino para nuevos campos o estableciendo un nuevo paradigma), y / o ( 2) la sociedad en general (por ejemplo, dando forma a la tecnología o la política) La investigación parece haberse vuelto cada vez más importante dentro de la comunidad efectiva de altruismo. En los últimos años, se fundó GPI, FHI comenzó a crecer significativamente y Open Phil está expandiendo su capacidad de investigación. Will MacAskill incluso llamó al altruismo efectivo un "programa de investigación". Desde esta perspectiva, deberíamos estar interesados en crear nuevos campos de investigación, o al menos en influir en los existentes, así como en impactar a la sociedad. Observé los dos estudios académicos más exhaustivos y rigurosos sobre los equipos de investigación productivos que pude encontrar después de una revisión superficial de la literatura disponible (una revisión de la literatura, Bland y Ruffin (1992) y un metaanálisis, Hülseger, Anderson y Salgado ( 2009)). Desafortunadamente, no pude encontrar estudios exhaustivos similares de equipos de investigación disruptivos en particular. Complementé esto con siete estudios de caso de equipos de investigación que seleccioné, según mi propio criterio no sistemático, que han sido particularmente perturbadores.