Wired 12.06: VIEW:Smarter Than the CEO
Many minds collaborating better than one brilliant person solo…good arguements for collaboration software I think…
Instead of looking to a single person for the right answers, companies need to recognize a simple truth: Under the right conditions, groups are smarter than the smartest person within them. We often think of groups and crowds as stupid, feckless, and dominated by the lowest common denominator. But take a look around. The crowd at a racing track does an uncannily good job of forecasting the outcome, better in fact than just about any single bettor can do. Horses that go off at 3-to-1 odds win a quarter of the time, horses that go off at 6-to-1 win a seventh of the time, and so on. Decision markets, like the Iowa Electronics Markets (which forecasts elections) and the Hollywood Stock Exchange (which predicts box office results), consistently outperform industry forecasts. Even the stock market, though it's subject to fads and manias, is near-impossible to beat over time.