Collectives emerge, change, grow, and dissolve across temporal and spatial scales. These processes have been studied and modeled in different species, but many of the underlying mechanisms and regularities remain elusive. This is problematic as understanding these collective processes is essential for the maintenance, curation, and development of our own human societies facing a rapid succession of physical and social challenges. In a workshop held at CSH on October 19-21, 2022, we brought together 10 scientists studying collectives from biological, evolutionary, neurological, psychological, and sociological perspectives, and discussed how collectives at different scales develop, reproduce, and die, maintain or change function, and respond to perturbations. We have sketched a a conceptual framework to study resilience of different collectives against perturbations, and started building general mathematical concepts to investigate how collectives can perform defined tasks after a perturbation. We would now like to meet as a smaller group and dedicate several days to writing a paper together and discuss related ideas.