Vera John-Steiner's latest book, Creative Collaborations (OUP 2000), presents case studies of over 50 important creative and scientific collaborations, including Einstein and Marcel Grossman, and Marie and Pierre Curie. A leading scholar of socio-cultural studies, she grounds her approach to creativity in the work of L S Vygotsky, arguing that knowledge is itself created as well as acquired through social interaction. For instance, a young child first learns through the transmitted experiences of its caregivers, and throughout one's life, individual identity and knowledge develops in the context of relationships with others.

The thrust of John-Steiner's presentation, based on the case studies, was that collaboration usually begins voluntarily and informally, and moves towards shared vision and outcome. The seed for collaborative working is the problem that one cannot solve alone, and in a true collaboration, intense dialogues over prolonged periods of time are motivated by the determination to transform knowledge - perhaps from multiple disciplines - and to innovate. In the same way that two students working together on a project - one with mathematical flair, the other with scientific expertise - will divide their labour as appropriate to their task, collaborators must negotiate their differences to establish their vision.

A fully collaborative relationship, John-Steiner argued, demands trust and belief in one another's abilities, and culminates in a committed connection of values, roles, and methods - or 'disciplinary complementarity'. How this differs from 'teamwork' is also important for John-Steiner. Teamwork, she argued, usually features clearly defined objectives for each participant, whereas collaboration is a more open-ended process of shared creation from which unexpected results may emerge. Nevertheless, collaborations need not remain confined to partnerships between two colleagues: larger groups may very well collaborate, and even in a small partnership it is often the case that expertise from outside the core group will be drawn on.

Dynamic collaborations, then, must be built upon egalitarian relationships, which, as John-Steiner pointed out, are difficult in a hierarchical society. However, effective collaboration does not only address the specific goals of a project: it also contributes to human concerns, and to one's on-going development. She accepted that not all collaborations work - indeed, suggested that most successful collaborations last no longer than ten years - but argued that many possibilities emerge from collaborative work, and that these examples should be used as illustrations of effective practice.

During discussion following the presentation, John-Steiner addressed the issue of creative collaboration between humans and machines. Though her research to date has not covered this area, she suggested that such relationships are possible: machines such as computers are tools that support learning, active agents used by participants in the learning process. While the technology may currently be way ahead of the psychology, the potential interactivity of digital media offers the opportunity to expand creative collaborations into a new age of learning.