The Rise of Collective Intelligence

Ok, at first glance this might seem like a very academic subject for me to be addressing after my two last posts centering around the "f" word, but actually it is just another take on the FIO philosophy (see my March 4 post and do the math to learn what FIO means).

My previous entries have talked about how FIO means, essentially, just doing something out of blind faith that you will succeed and waiting for success to come find you. The theory of collective intelligence seems to be the Mac Daddy of FIO-ism. Collective intelligence is the intersection of the FIO's out there, in some way devoting time, thought and/or energy to topics they are interested/talented in and companies then using their expertise to effortlessly profit.

This report gives some perfect examples of what I mean. Read the Lego example on page 18. Lego holds an annual contest to get ideas for new pieces. The winner receives not only the satisfaction of knowing that they--a total layperson far from being a trained Lego-maker--designed this great piece, but 5% of the sales of the piece as well. And the company, the article states, effortlessly enjoyed a 10% decrease in design and labor costs and a 10% increase in revenue. I'd say that's a win-win situation, wouldn't you?

An even better example is YouTube. Two 20-somethings basically set it up and let people populate it with their videos--then sell it to Google for $1.65 billion. Then, on the flip side, is my current FIO poster child--an amateur video producer makes a iPod fan video, uploads it to YouTube, where an Apple ad exec just HAPPENS to see it. The exec personally calls the dude who made it and asks if he'd like his video to be featured during the World Series. I mean, come on--how can you read that and deny that there is definite truth to FIO?