Ever wonder how businesses come up with fresh ideas for their products, services and internal processes? Many hire external consultants or dedicate specific internal innovation teams to the task. But others take a more cost-efficient and creative approach. They use the most intelligent resource they already have: their people.
These businesses use the concept of collective intelligence. This helps them pool together the diverse perspectives, experiences, skills and personalities of their people to innovate through collaboration. It unites people from different business departments, seniority levels and professional backgrounds. This technique provides a way of accessing the company’s “shared mind”. This is a source of expert knowledge and creativity that no individual or dedicated innovation team (no matter how experienced or talented) can produce themselves.
When Experts Come Together
The term Collective Intelligence was coined by the philosopher Pierre Lévy in his book “Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace”(1994). The Professor from the Communication Department of the University of Ottawa proposed that, though it’s impossible for us to be experts in everything, we can be experts in a particular niche.
Collective Intelligence is the bringing together of our expertise in these niches. It unlocks a unique combination of knowledge and opening up new possibilities. In business, this is particularly useful when applied to a standard innovation process. It helps increase the number of ideas a company can produce. Then, it uses evaluation to highlight the best ones.
Is your business looking to create an industry-defining product? Want to streamline an internal process, or boost employee engagement? Implementing an open and collaborative innovation process can be the way to do it. It can help you define better ideas without resorting to costly external support.
Learn How to Thrive From Within
Our free webinar reveals how Collective Intelligence can amplify your innovation process through collaboration. Join speakers Frederic Alluin (Co-founder and CEO, Nextinit) and Rudy Gonzalo (Nextinit collaborator) as they deep dive into real-world examples of Collective Intelligence. Here, they will share top tips on how it can be applied in both idea generation and evaluation, and reveal some common mistakes for you to look out for.
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