As I’m reading The Wisdom of Crowds, I can’t help wondering what the implications of the book’s findings are on Knowledge Management, etc. (I tried to look it up in the index but the book doesn’t seem to have one.) A recurring theme in Knowledge Management and related fields is that of sharing knowledge across an organization so that everyone knows what is going on everywhere else.
I’m not very far into the book yet, but as I understand it the wisdom of the crowds increases as the crowd becomes more diverse and each member of the crowd has private information that no one else has. The book also seems to be going down the path of arguing that in order for crowds to make good decisions, the members of the crowd should look out for number one and in the aggregate the crowd will make the best decision (for the crowd, not necessarily for the individual).
Hmmmmm……. I need to get back to reading.
no straight lines 