I’m reminded of the phrase “The whole is better than the sum of its parts”, and this couldn’t be truer in the context of this post. History is replete with examples where the human civilization has benefitted immensely by tapping into the crowd for its diversity and richness of opinions. So whether it’s the democrazy or the market led economy, the results are substantially better than the ones led by individuals or a vested interest group. 

Even the most intelligent and learned of the lot don’t stack up against the power of the crowd, as is demonstrated in the following interesting case. 

In 1995, Caltech professor Scott Page built a simulation in which artificial agents (based on rules) tried to solve difficult problems. He ran his simulation using two groups of agents, one was meant to represent the best and the brightest of problem solvers (lets call them Group A) and the rest was a random, disparate collection of mathematicians with a wide range of problem solving capability (let’s call this Group B). 

The Flickr crowd - courtesy Flickr

To Page’s surprise, Group B outperformed Group A, and this result was consistent even after he fiddled with the variables in his simulation. He went on to spend a decade in studying the cause, and implications of this phenomenon and published a book in 2007 entitled The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. 

At the core of his theorem is the observation that people of extraordinary ability or intellect are a homogenous group, and because they are conditioned from the same institutes or schools of thoughts, they tend to apply a similar set of problem solving techniques. In essence they are narrower in perspective, and in the diversity of opinions from the crowd at large. 

This has even lead to the term “crowdsourcing”, which is outsourcing a task traditionally done by an employee or contractor to the community at large, and opening it up for improvements and enhancements based on the community’s collective knowledge and experience. 

To cite an example, Wikipedia which started off in 2001, and crowdsourced from contributors around the world, is today the most popular reference work in the world. With more than 2.8 million articles in English alone, Wikipedia is 25 times larger than the next largest English language encyclopedia,  Encylopaedia Britannica (which is over a 100 years old!). As a result of this involvement on an enormous scale, and the constant validation by the community, Wikipedia is also arguably the most unbiased in its content.

YouTube is another example of the power of the crowd. Here is an interesting statistic on YouTube. Since its inception in 2005, it has gathered over 150 million videos!, which would take over 870 years to watch! The community adds in over 200,000 videos everyday!! If its worth its salt, a video will find its way into YouTube, even evading through prying eyes and restrictions.

If you have been looking for a solution to your problems, (no matter how trivial or complex) head to Yahoo Answers, which is again driven by the power of the collective.

The crowd is also self motivated. It’s the aspiration to be recognised and acknowledged for their accomplishments and to step up the social ladder of the community that keeps them going.

Organisations and governments have now begun to realise the enormous potential and are tapping into the crowd for solutions to complex problems, ranging from administration related issues, macroeconomics to even cure for life threatening diseases. 

It isn’t without its negatives though;crowdsourcing is subject to noise and is difficult  to predict or control. But on the whole, the imagination, intuition and ingenuity of the crowd prevails over conventional systems.