The coastal ocean is an important and dynamic region that includes cities, deltas, estuaries, mariculture operations, navigation channels, and seaports. Teams of scientists, engineers and citizen scientists working to understand and mitigate negative impacts from coastal processes must also understand the individual, group, organizational, and societal factors affecting collaborators. To improve coastal resilience, collaboration is essential for all types of organizations (e.g., academia, business, government) because the problems facing most communities or organizations are too complex for the lone researcher, innovative company, or government agency. No individual or single organization has all the relevant information, knowledge or resources to solve challenging coastal resilience problems.