Headless Book company.

I've been reading about the use of 'the wisdom of crowds'. Apprently if you get a lot of people to view the weight of a animal at an agricultural show the average of the whole crowd is more accurate than any individual guess.

Another way of doing this is to establish a 'futures' market in that prediction. For example one has been done on the outcome of elections and who wins what at the Hollywood Oscars - which is more accurate apparently than doing a pole.

I like the notion that a flock/crowd can be collectively smart.

I've been wondering what would happen if a large company used its collective intelligence to figure out what the best next product to produce was.

I imagine something like an intranet web application. It would display several alternative products. A bonus ( money ) would be then used to trade on what the company would invest in next.

For example imagine a large publishing company or a small one with a number of 'external content consultants'. They have twenty or so books they want to decided how much effort to put effort (marketing and preordering so on) into. They set up a collective market (via internal intranet) and then on the basis of the results assign efforts/budgets accordingly.


It makes sense if you have read 'the wisdom of crowds'.

I like the idea that eventually the company is run collectivity ( but no one in the company knows it). The company executives are just dead meat.