I have been following the writings of Jeff Howe. Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects.
What on earth has media and entertainment got to do with fish, I hear you scream?? Exactly!! Read on to see the compelling insight that helps explain why below.
In June of 2006 Jeff published “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” in Wired. He has continued to cover the phenomenon in his blog, crowdsourcing.com, and is currently writing a book on the subject.
In Chapter Six he quotes Caltech Professor Scott E Page and his Diversity Trumps Ability theorem. At its heart is the observation that people of high ability are a homogenous group. They are often trained in the same sorts of institutions, tend to possess similar perspectives and apply similar problem-solving techniques.
Page explains why groups often outperform experts. At the heart of this insight is diversity matters.
Understanding diversity is imperative to understanding collective intelligence, and collective intelligence is an essential ingredient in one of the primary categories of crowdsourcing—the attempt to harness many people’s knowledge in order to solve problems or predict future outcomes or help direct corporate strategy. …..
The emergence of the Internet has given new import to collective intelligence, for the simple reason that the Internet has done more than anything else in history to facilitate it.
Crowdsourcing is one way of thinking about what we are trying to achieve through the Finfish project. By connecting diverse types of people from around the world to focus on a particular problem - the global fish supply gap - we are anticipating a powerful collective creative effort with more capability than the best resourced scientific teams on the planet.
We welcome you and your insights as important contributors to that effort. To find out more about how you can participate view the information located here.
If you would like to read a little more from Jeff on crowdsourcing, you might care to visit his blog.
Please invite your friends to participate in this effort!