Strong Opinions @marksbirch

mediahascookies:

“Crowdsourcing doesn’t always lead to the wisdom of the crowds. It sometimes leads to bland mediocrity”

—

Economist correspondent Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran speaking on a panel at the  DLD (Digital - Life - Design) Conference

I was never much of a believer in the wisdom of crowds.  There are certainly times when the crowd can be helpful, often it turns out to be the safe choice, or even worse, the choice of flawed common wisdom.  The “Ask the Audience” choice on the TV gameshow “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” is one such example that comes to mind.

Crowds can be useful as a baseline of current thinking or confirmation of existing concepts and products.  In these cases, polls and focus groups are perfect avenues for collecting this information.  If you are doing something off the beaten track, novel, or innovative, then the crowd is no guide at all.  No amount of user testing and crowd sourcing in the world will help you gauge the potential success of an idea.  Ground-breaking ideas are the domain of risk takers, not consensus makers.