James Surowiecki, the author of the best-selling The Wisdom of Crowds, talked to the audience about the theme of his book: avoiding reliance on individuals or small groups of elite employees to solve problems. He provided several examples of why this approach is not usually going to give you the best answer, and may, more often than not, give you totally wrong answers.
One example of how the crowd is usually right is the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire, where individual contestants who get stumped can use a “lifeline” — one of which is to trust the wisdom of the audience. As it turns out, the audience is right 90% of the time.
Wikipedia is a fascinating example of trusting the crowd to provide you with the right answers, and the majority of the time, they do. NASA has also used crowd-sourcing to accelerate the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project timelines. NASA discovered that the crowd was able to solve their challenge faster and as accurately as they would expect if they hired professional scientists to tackle the task.
“The more diverse a group is, the smarter and better their results will be,” said Surowiecki.
Surwiecki provided numerous examples of how organizations in the pharmaceutical, political, science and information technology companies are using crowdsourcing to predict outcomes, develop new ideas, find solutions to existing problems. And, it’s not that new. Companies like Eli Lilly has been doing it for years (for research and development) with great success.
Crowdsourcing is especially useful in big organizations, because there’s so much information and it’s so hard to get to (including information locked inside of the brains of employees, partners, customers).
“Diversity is the key to crowdsouring success,” says Surowiecki. “It makes sense to take diversity of training, perspective, experience, geography, age, gender… into account.” When you do, he says, you’ll find much better answers to your challenges.
Diversity will help you avoid group-think. When members in a group get too comfortable with one another and the more they discuss, the more the start to agree. There’s a need for a voice of dissent - a devil’s advocate of sorts. “You’ll have more conflict and it will be harder to manage these groups,” Suroweicki says, “but the benefits are worth the effort.”
He talked a bit about the human problems behind knowledge sharing. Because information is power, some folks are reluctant to share for fear they could be replaced. He also discussed the problems associated with corporate cultures that support the notion that everyone should get along and come to consensus, which doesn’t lead to the best answers.
“Crowds are smartest when people in them act as individuals as much as possible,” he says. He also warned about talkative people, those who dominate discussions.
“Talkative people have an inordinate impact on group discussions. This would be okay if talkative people were smarter, but there’s no evidence to support the contention that talkative people are any more intelligent than the rest of us.” The audience found this comment, particularly humorous.
Surowiecki was an excellent addition to the roster of this event and captivated the audience. His examples will provide valuable food for thought for those attending the event (and those of you who couldn’t make it) who are attempting to tackle complex content and data challenges.
