Center for Social Innovation

To develop proposals for effective environmental policy, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) runs scenarios past lawyers, economists, scientists, and policy wonks, often multiple times. Each specialist’s input informs the next, until the team comes up with an idea that seems both economically feasible and environmentally acceptable. “No one person could do that,” says Lisa Moore, scientist at EDF, and that’s why she likes her job: “I just want to be part of a good team.” But Moore can be reluctant to rely on people, a mistrust she says is “kind of a strange characteristic to have as a through-and-through team player.”

New research suggests that this mistrust is not strange at all. In fact, it can boost team ... Read more