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Collective Intelligence - How can unguided groups self organise to make intelligent decisions?

"Collective intelligence is any intelligence that arises from -- or is a capacity or characteristic of -- groups and other collective living systems"¹

In nature, scientists have done extensive studies into the self-organising behaviour of slime mould, ants and bees that act collectively to solve complex problems. What's amazing is how each ant has a relatively simple function, with limited access to information about the whole colony, yet it knows just how to modify its behaviour to serve the greater good. Steven Johnson's book, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software², looks in detail at the behaviour of ants, and how this type of collective intelligence arises without any central leadership.

The study of collective intelligence (CI) is multifaceted, and Tom Atlee, of the Co-Intelligence Institute, breaks it down into these areas:

reflective / dialogic - CI arising from shared dialogue
evolutionary - CI over time in ecosystems, science and culture
flow-based - CI through shared activities in discrete groups
statistical - CI of large groups achieving "crowd wisdom"
human-machine - CI through synergy of the human mind and computers³

These areas do overlap, and history has produced enough examples of collective intelligence to fill many a library. What is significant now is the question of scale. With the rise of Web 2.0 and the power of the internet, we can now discuss collective intelligence on a global scale.

Here is a diagram with a big picture view of the types of collective intelligence⁶:

A notable institution researching CI is the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, which has taken on the question of "How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?"⁴. Their research projects include: The Climate Collaboratorium - "using new collaboration tools, this project is attempting to harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people to help solve the problems of global climate change"⁴.

This brings us back to the question of how organisations can enable CI? MIT's Handbook of Collective Intelligence⁵ lists these factors as important considerations:

Factors	Considerations
diversity	increase of diversity can decrease bias in collective decision-making
organisational structure	depending on purpose, informal or formal structures may work better
modularisation of tasks	modularised work can improve group performance
communications structure	effective communication, including a shared vocabulary, enhances group awareness
incentives for contribution	can include economic or intrinsic motivation
learning	group must be able to learn and adapt to changing environments

Any discussion of CI must include a disclaimer that it is not inherently wise. James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds⁷, warns us about the failures of crowd intelligence in examples like mobs, or investors contributing to a stock market crash. These sorts of problems occur when the groups are too emotional, too homogeneous, too centralised, too divided, or too imitative. To create a 'wise crowd', he believes these factors are crucial:

Diversity of opinion
Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
Independence
People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.
Decentralization
People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
Aggregation
Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision⁸.

Some examples of CI include Wikipedia, now boasting 13 million articles. Wikipedia uses an open editing collaborative model, relying on volunteers to create CI. Another model is Innocentive, an open innovation marketplace, where monetary rewards are offered for the most innovative solution to a challenge.

Current technologies enable a global level of interconnectedness that brings great promise for collective intelligence. It still remains to be seen how organisations will put these into wide-scale practice.

Sources:

1. Atlee, Tom and George Pór. "Collective Intelligence as a Field of Multi-disciplinary Study and Practice". Blog of Collective Intelligence, 22 Jan 2007. http://www.community-intelligence.com/blogs/public/

2. Johnson, Steven. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

3. Atlee, Tom and George Pór. "Forms of Collective Intelligence". Blog of Collective Intelligence, 1 May 2006. http://www.community-intelligence.com/blogs/public/archives/cat_definitions.html

4. "Homepage". MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. http://cci.mit.edu/

5. "Main Page". Handbook of Collective Intelligence. MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. http://scripts.mit.edu/~cci/HCI/index.php?title=Main_Page

6. Generozova, Olga. CI types1s.jpg. Collective Intelligence. Wikipedia. 10 May 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CI_types1s.jpg

7. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. New York : Doubleday, 2004.

8. "The Wisdom of Crowds." Wikipedia, 29 Jul 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Wisdom_of_Crowds&oldid=304791116