Wisdom of the Crowds – Guest Post | Angela Maiers, Speaker, Educator, #YOUMATTER

18th Dec 2011 Posted in: Digital Literacy and Learning

Guest Post submitted by Elaine Hirsch who has written some great new ideas on the necessity of of using the “wisdom of the crowd” to advance our personal and professional goals. Thank you Elaine, for this great insight!

Using crowdsourcing for a more productive business is an idea that should be considered by any and all businessowners. It can take the place of traditional hierarchies and can even cut down the time it takes to get tasks done throughout the office.

Crowdsourcing efforts can sometimes produce more reliable information than those provided by experts and graduates from online PhD programs. Using one of the three methods listed could save a great deal of time and resources.

The most obvious form of this is the “idea competition” that many businesses have resorted to for solving the most incredible (and mundane) problems. The use of Twitter and other social media outlets to present a problem to the masses is a form of crowdsourcing that many people have seen without even knowing. Finding trending topics on Twitter shows what the masses are interested in so businesses can record the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

There are businesses that do more than simply post problems online and wait for answers. The competition might end in a job with the company that needs the solution or a cash prize. However, this is the simplest of forms. Using social media is cheap (usually free) and is easy to access. Sometimes, a company might need to go to greater lengths for answers. Just reading Jeff Howe’s Twitter feed is, in a way a form of crowdsourcing, as it allows Mr. Howe to aggregate information from the masses to his feed.

Researchers in Montreal created a video game that was intended to discover the solution to a gene-sequencing problem that has baffled them for years. They released the video game for anyone to play, and the gamers that played the game faithfully ended up solving a problem that men in white lab coats with doctorates could not. This form of crowdsourcing does not discriminate by age or ability level. Since crowdsourcing leverages the size rather than the intelligence of its sample group, the aggregated information gathered is much more important than the individual data points.

Crowdsourcing.org also lists many forms of crowdsourcing. Crowdfunding is used as a source for capital for new projects. Rather than leaning on rich venture capitalists, a small business can create a network of people who are offering what little they can to the cause. Crowdsourcing is also the form of funding that propelled the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008.

Because crowdsourcing is a way to connect the world, it can bring together engaging people with just the click of a mouse. Since each additional user of a social network further expands the scale of the tool, social networks can be scaled in a low-cost manner to meet the demands of today’s online populations. With the wisdom of the crowds becoming just as useful as the opinions of experts in certain fields of study, crowdsourcing will be an important phenomenon to consider.

With these inspiring words from Elaine, I hope you can all go and make an effort to explore tapping into the power of collaboration at a new level today! Remember- WE ARE SMARTER TOGETHER!! Thanks for the reminder, Elaine!