The Wisdom of Crowds: Rethinking consensus
I am a HUGE believer in building consensus , but The Wisdom of Crowds is starting to make be rethink the approach a bit. I just finished reading, ok listening to the audio version on my bike ride into work, James Surowiecki's latest book. His point is that groups of people make good decisions on matters of general knowledge when all of the following conditions are meet: 1. There is a diversity of opinion 2. People are not overtly influenced by others in the group 3. Some "fair" aggregation system is at work Surowiecki argues that these elements allow you to tap into the collect smarts of the group while canceling out their errors.. Doing things like spending tons of time consensus building often has the result of creating less diversity in opinion
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Read the complete post at http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2007/05/18/the-wisdom-of-crowds-rethinking-consensus.aspx