Tapping Into the Wisdom of Crowds

"When people get together in a group, they become more stupid than they were apart. As a result, although we often pay lip service to the idea of collaborative decision-making and the importance of listening to different voices, organizations and communities often assume that the best decisions will emerge from the judgment of a single leader or a small collection of decision-makers. But while this assumption may seem sensible to anyone who’s had to suffer through a mind-numbing office meeting, it’s actually a mistake. If you want to solve a complicated problem, or make a good decision, the best thing you can do is to cast a wide net and to incorporate the judgments of many people, rather than just a few. Crowds of people, it turns out, are not dumb. Much of the time, in fact, they turn out to be brilliant."