I just read the book, We are Smarter than Me, by Barry Liebert, Jon Spector and a cast of contributors. The premise of the book is threefold:
- That crowd intelligence will come up with more breakthrough ideas than smaller groups
- Successful companies can use the Internet to access this collective intelligence
- Every business process, from engineering to finance, can benefit
The book goes on to describe in detail how many companies have used these facts to their advantage in the areas of R&D, customer service, sales, finance, etc. For example, Proctor & Gamble has a goal to outsource 50% of new product ideas from outside the company, and that this goal is now well in hand.
So how does this relate to engineering? Most engineering groups that I’ve visited have a bunch of people in an office, talking to clients or to the other departments within the organization. The ideas of how to get the jobs done come from within those predetermined sets of relationships, or occasionally from a consultant brought in for that purpose. But what if you could put a particularly difficult problem onto a web-site and let people comment on how to solve it? Eli Lilly did this with their Innocentive web site and have found that most of the breakthrough ideas come from outside of the “expert” field. eg – physicists solving chemistry problems in a new and different way. So when I say that Engineers are smarter than me, what I mean is that the plural is smarter than the singular.
There isn’t a place yet that I know of where engineers can post complex challenges for others to solve. Our Ask@ service, for example, is just one of many engineering message boards and these really fall short of what this book describes. Typically the more complex challenges require bringing a larger group together and engaging in some form of meetings or online collaboration.
Getting the technology to do this is easy, and we’re working on a free solution here at ENGINEERING.com to provide that for you. The difficulty your organization will face is more about how to engage a group that wants to help solve your problems. As always, your ideas and comments are welcome. You can also email me at jhayes@engineering.com
John