Why don’t businesses tap into the Wisdom of Crowds — “the collective knowledge of employees and customers on all key organizational and new product development decisions”?

Sez Dave Pollard of How to Save the World:

The real reason Wisdom of Crowds hasn’t caught on in business?

(1) Management isn’t really interested in the opinions of employees and customers – they think they have all the answers and that their judgement is better than the ‘crowd’s’, and

(2) If it were to be found (as I believe it would) that the crowd makes better decisions than management, what need is there for management? With most executives obscenely overpaid for what they contribute (and, to be fair, over-blamed when things go wrong), nothing could be more terrifying than a cheaper, better replacement for the entire upper hierarchy of organizations.

Fascinating, and quite convincing. And somehow, Dave manages to go from this interesting topic to the theory of gift certificates to the importance of local shopping, all in the same post.

I’m not sure who intro’d me to How to Save the World, but thank you. And thanks, Dave. Your blog’s one I always slow down to read.

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