Who would you rather trust with a question, one or two experts or hundreds of bloggers posting comments on your site? After reading James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds, you would probably choose hundreds of bloggers. This doesn't make much sense, but the research and anecdotes are remarkable. The implications for the way we work, how we make decisions at a parish, and how we use the power of the blogosphere are amazing.
It turns out that combined intelligence of many average people tend to be better than that of a few experts. Here are some examples...
In 1906 British scientist Francis Galton attended a cattle fair. A group of people gathered for a contest to see who could guess the weight of an ox. People were all over the map in guessing that the ox weighed 1,198 pounds. However, when everyone's answers were added and then divided by the total number of submissions, the answer was 1,197 pounds... coincidence? According to research, large numbers of people have a combined brain power greater than some experts.
In the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire people are able to call the smartest person they know for an answer or they can poll the audience, a random group of people with nothing better to do that day, for an answer. Historically, the "expert" friends have been right 65% of the time. The random audience? 95% of the time.
For this to work the group needs to be diversified and they need to be able to express their opinion without being influenced by others. Many of us have experienced the power of "the wisdom of the crowds" in blogswarms, wikipedia, and Google rankings...
How can you use this at work to solve problems? How can you use this via the web? Interesting possibilities...
Some content provided by Marco Visscher
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You ask how this could solve problems at work? I think the more information gathered from more people earlier in a process, the better a process can be created. Seems this would or should have a bearing on the nature of leadership?
Two points that I think I worth dwelling on more are:
- "For this to work the group needs to be diversified and they need to be able to express their opinion without being influenced by others." Hard to achieve this sometimes, no?
- Doesn't serious innovation often come about when someone goes against conventional wisdom?
Posted by: Ernesto | November 03, 2005 at 05:55 AM
Hi Ernesto, unless we are concious of this, either because of laziness or arrogance we tend to ask the same few experts at work and not poll everyone. This is best for things for which you need an idea or answer and for which the alternative is a guess by an expert.
To avoid the influence, electronic surveys probably work best... We do this for somethings, but it we can probably put more meaningful questions out for others to help us with.
Posted by: Hector | November 03, 2005 at 04:54 PM