“Has recognition of the power of openness, mass collaboration, crowdsourcing and “collaboratories” to solve problems and innovate become just the way we work?”

This was the question I posed prior to the TAP the Collective event in this TheAppGap post.

Melody Hildebrandt, TAP Conference organizer, spoke with me about the 3 themes emerging from the event presentations and discussions:

1.  Success tapping collective intelligence depends on how people employ tools and organizational culture change is vital to pursuing new innovative paths

Intellipedia doyen Don Burke drives home this point in his presentation talking about “institutional scar tissue” and the OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual 1944.

The sabotage theme is reiterated by Ryan Hahn, a knowledge management consultant to the World Bank. He describes the challenge of channeling information from people on the ground, around the world, back into the organization and,  more important, getting senior management’s attention to what’s important.

Hahn describes using a prediction market, (on the Inkling platform) to help the World Bank address the financial crisis. Lessons learned start with asking good, non-political questions. His assessment– after running the prediction market for 8 months– is mixed success.  While the prediction market produced reliable forecasts the challenge is persuading senior management to value the source. Persistence is key.

2.    Don’t be afraid to fail

Many initiatives failed at first before succeeding.

Emma Antunes, Spacebook , NASA’s social network for collaboration speaks to the practicalities of ensuring “what’s in it for me”, the house rules for responsible participation and sharing, and providing reasons for people to keep coming back

3.    Move from Output to Contribution

Melody made the point that a mindset change is needed,  moving from focus on output (status reports, official meeting minutes) to contribution and reputation. This change requires having people participating as their real selves, not as avatars or anonymous names.

Other Recommended Watching

The following TAP event videos may also interest TheAppGap readers focused on how  emerging technologies will impact the future of work:

i.  David Resseguie, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s  Sensorpedia, a Wikipedia for sensors speaks about using a wiki to increase public data sharing

ii. Shyam Sankar, Palantir, describes “augmented intelligence” and their software, built from efforts to reduce fraud at PayPal, and power of bringing diverse talent to solve challenging problems.

iii. Robin Hanson-  George Mason University economist and Chief Scientist, Consensus Point (a prediction market platform) explains how prediction markets work for making sense of unverifiable and subjective data in organizations.

He warns however to be prepared for organizational disruption. Hanson echoes the World Bank experience that having management interested in the prediction market data is essential for successful adoption. Best Buy’s approach is offered as a model.

Melody Hildebrandt has written about the conference highlights and also posted the video so you can benefit from the presentations. Individual speaker videos are searchable through Youtube. The Twitter exchanges around the event are available through #taptc.

What do you think?

What is the promise, and prospects, for widespread adoption of collective intelligence approaches in organizations?

Is your enterprise using technologies like NASA’s Spacebook,  Intellipedia and Sensorpedia, or prediction markets?

~ Jenny Ambrozek