(Via Dr Fish), An article from mechanical engineering magazine (by Kathryn Jablokow) addresses the new rules for solving problems nowadays. Although it's written for engineers, there are some pertinent elements for other domains. Some excerpts:

"The number of problems we each can solve alone is getting smaller. Not only are there more problems than any one person can handle, but no one person has the brainpower to cover—on his or her own—the wide range of knowledge and expertise that is so often required (...) To gather all the knowledge we need to solve complex problems, we know that we must collaborate. Working together is no longer optional. Paradoxically, in order to collaborate and solve problems effectively, we need to know even more—and about different things."

The article then describes a very cognitive-centric vision of problem solving ("problem solving level (...) problem solving style"). It's however very pragmatic and it gives interesting insights about to apply this with some concrete examples/stories. I won't enter into much details here but it's basically about problem solving, Adaption-Innovation theory, which states that people differ in their innate preferences for structure in problem solving. Very polemical but the examples are intriging. Why do I blog this? some good thoughts about collaborative problem solving and design.