Collebrative Wisdom In Use

Introduction

Collaborative Wisdom, also known as Collective wisdom or sometime referred as the Wisdom of the Crowd, is the �the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group.’ Four essential elements that are required in the successful implementation of the process are Diversity (of the crowd), Independence, Decentralization and Aggregation.

Examples of Collaborative Wisdom

Example 1

A typical example of collaborative wisdom is the use of collaborative blog on the World Wide Web.1 This internet-based weblog is used widely for publishing posts and information written and viewed by multiple users. The blog “powerline” is a high profile collaborative blog based around the uniting theme of politics and news media reflection. Similar to other collaborative blogs, “powerline” has experienced the growing popularity of more collaborative efforts, it is also set up by an established blogger, John Hinderaker,2 to pool resource and time in a successful attempt to reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular website and attract wider audience.

“Powerline” is a fitting example of collaborative wisdom because it is contributed not only by Hinderaker, the main author, but numerous well-established co-bloggers who has extensive experience in legal and media industries. The collaborative blog itself is also open for non-professional users to contribute their idea in a separate forum online, but also linked to the main publishing page of founder bloggers to ensure greater information accessibility. In this example, the main advantage for the users of collaborative blog would be the diverse perspective and opinion provided on significant political issues and policy interpretations. Each contribution entered into the blogs are monitored for spamming and its content to ensure information quality. The main bloggers of “powerline” publishes their articles in a personally biased manner and their main incentives for doing so is to communicate their message about certain political or legal issue across to the public. The public also provides their personal opinion and feedback in return. Conversely, the public users also receive helpful comments from each other and the bloggers. Through this effective communication, all users of the collaborative weblog are exposed to a wider and comprehensive perspective and reaction from a wide community of professionals and citizens in which such outcomes would be impossible to achieve individually.

However, “powerline” as a collaborative blog also has its limitations. While collaborative blogs encourage vibrant discussion on issues of politics, but they tend to attract bloggers who desires to promote their own personal websites and baiting readers with controversial viewpoints. This is a common behaviour found in many collaborative blogs that potentially violates information accuracy through manipulation and distortion. Secondly, the task of filtering large number of collaborative blogs are enormous which require huge effects of community-minded administrators to remove and modify materials that conflicts with general information ethics and website’s service terms.

Example 2

Another example of collaborative wisdom would be “InnoCentive.” The aim of InnoCentive.com, according to its website, is to вЂ?bring together creative minds to create breakthrough solutions that touch every human life.’ Seekers on InnoCentive, which are the organizations seeking solutions on particular issue in life science, engineering, computer science, and business, are invited post their challenge and problems on the InnoCentive website and offers significant financial reward for people who provides best solutions. The вЂ?solvers’ can apply their expertise and try to provide best possible solutions to the particular questions.

The main contributors are the “solvers” as identified on the website. They are creative thinkers with different expertise who would like to solve challenging problems. Financial rewards are provided by the seeking company as incentives. The incentive for solvers may also be the feeling of satisfaction one got when solves a challenging question.

InnoCentive.com uses internet website as the main technical platform for the facilitation of knowledge sharing, the website provides a convenient and confidential platform to aggregate knowledge from its global network. Users can simply register online for free and browses unsolved-problems presented by organizations and then post their solutions while wait for feedback from the company.

The website can be viewed as an example of collaborative wisdom since it aggregated knowledge from a group of people. The company also have a chance to supplement its own R&D resources with experts from all over the world and to achieve more comprehensive and practical solutions to their problem. The main benefit that companies are seeking for, is the new ideas and solutions that can be used to achieve competitive advantages by вЂ?producing breakthrough products and accelerate their development cycles helping them stay ahead of the competition through innovation and faster time to market’. Thus, they would only pay for the result or solution which would otherwise be impossible to achieve on their own, gaining greater savings on the wages and research expense incurred by the R&D. However, this also presents a problem in that “solvers” may become discouraged when their ideas and solutions are not chosen or employed, leaving with them with little or no reward for their effort. One other frequent problem that exists on this matter would be the amount of “solutions” containing hidden agendas of advertisement, scams and sabotage in which requires extensive efforts of monitoring and filtering by the network administrator.

Example 3

The third example identified here is “Energize”. The main objective of this collaborative system is to enable all the volunteering leaders in different organisations to share their knowledge in this area. This includes instructions to managing volunteers with different ages, different sectors, and guidelines of coping with disabilities and children and tips of recruiting new volunteers.

The main contributors here are mainly the volunteering leaders in different