Wired 12.06: VIEW
Interesting, but frustratingly light, article on the collective power of using groups within organisations.
The premise of hierarchical organisation dismissing the collective abilities of employees is an all too familiar one. It looks like smart companies, however, are using technology to leverage their brains and prove this anachronistic view of organisations wrong.
The Wired article uses examples of predictive markets as a good example of collective power, and it’s a compelling example.
But what about aggregating what people are searching for on intranet sites – could you extrapolate the zeitgeist or emergent problems of your organisation?
Forecasting product success, retrospective emergence of issues, even using employee’s PC’s spare processor cycles to do data processing.
And then there’s Wikipedia a brilliant example of the power of collective effort.
Any other examples and uses? I’ve been thinking that a behind-the-firewall Technorat+weblogs implementation could illustrate emergent thinking/issues in orgs – and this was the theme from an interesting comment on participo a while ago.