Tuesday, 10 Jul 2007
James Surowiecki on what crowds can and cannot do
Jay Rosen’s PressThink has posted an interview with James Surowiecki. His book, “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations” (Random House, 2004) was a best seller, which has greatly popularized - and maybe oversimplified - the idea of developing tools for harnessing collective wisdom:
What’s interesting to me, though, is that even if you really buy into the idea of the wisdom of crowds, actually putting that idea into practice in an organization is not easy. There are a lot of hurdles — both institutional and psychological — that make it hard for organizations to change, particularly when it comes to moving away from a traditional command-and-control model. So even when the idea makes sense to people, you probably need something more to turn into a practical reality.
Posted on Jul 10, 2007 | 3:37 pm EST
Permalink | Comment (1) | Print | Del.icio.us | Technorati
