My slides are now posted along with appreciation to all the very smart people-- acknowledged below-- who gave time to providing cases, insights and idea filtering to inform my talk.
Next Practice
Qualcomm's Ricardo Dos Santos and Motorola's Rami Levy are responsible for the two most evolved applications of "Collective Intelligence at Work" that I know:
i. Qualcomm's VentureFest where collective intelligence meets corporate entrepreneurship and
ii. Motorola's ThinkTank Idea Exchange (TIX), a model of "socialized innovation"
and generously shared their slides allowing others to learn from their initiatives.
Both demonstrate the investment involved in putting collective intelligence to work that begins with clear focus on business strategy and how value will be created through crowdsourcing. It proceeds to developing the organizational systems and collaboration platforms required to filter the most promising collected ideas into profitable business opportunities.Qualcomm's Venturefest and Motorola's ThinkTank Exchange also highlight the exceptional "Whole Mind" management talent required to lead collective intelligence initiatives. Both Ricardo dos Santos and Rami Levy succeed because they have respect and support from executive leadership and can also build the relationships across their organizations to engage key stakeholders and contributions from diverse minds.
Promise and Perils
My talk also included examples of crowdsourcing efforts that help us appreciate the discipline and evolved nature of the Qualcomm and Motorola collective intelligence initiatives.
Wikipedia participation dynamics, the gap between the number of people who read and actively contribute and their organizational challenges, have been well documented and discussed.
Tom Malone, director of MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, a "We are Smarter than Me" project sponsor, openly admits that the project needed more active facilitation. Ultimately a team of paid writers were hired to filter the crowdsourced contribution and produce the book.
Andrew McAfee's Cases 2.0 wiki was inspiration for Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises (WSE) (convened with colleague Victoria Axelrod) to collect examples of enterprises leading the way with sustainability projects to provide models for others. Paying closer attention to the number of Cases 2.0 collected emergently over two years would have made me wiser about the work involved to make WSE successful. I'm appreciating the organization the Social Media Advertising Consortium has assembled to collectively support the development of a common social media vocabulary and evolve their industry.Your taking time to review my slides, comment and challenge my thinking is appreciated.
Do you agree putting collective intelligence to work is critical to 21st century business success?
Please share your successful collective intelligence projects and recommended practices. And if perchance your initiatives did not meet expectations do take a moment to reflect so others benefit from your experience.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
CREDITS
In addition to Ricardo Dos Santos and Rami Levy who shared their cases my thanks to:
- Linda Rebrovick, CEO Consensus Point for permission to use her Web 2.0 Trends slide
- Ana María Llopis, founder of ideas4all; David Resseguie, Sensorpedia, Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and Michael Turillo, COO of Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations, (an industry leader through their investments in InnoCentive and Inno360) for product and trend insights
- Gary Colet and Phil Ridout (Knowledge Innovation Network), Victoria Axelrod, Bill Anderson, Steve Ardire, Dan Keldsen, John Maloney, Wendy Gold and Cathy Joseph for fresh perspectives
- Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises contributors and Vincent Associates for providing network maps.
RELATED RESOURCES
- KIN December 2 Resources Google Wave
- Ambrozek, Jenny, and Axelrod, Victoria "Broadcasting Innovation:Organising to Collect Intelligence," Inside Knowledge Dec. 2007
- Axelrod, Victoria and Ambrozek, Jenny "Prediction Markets Co-creating an Organisation's Future." Inside Knowledge Mar. 2008
