Reading Surowiecki or Sawyer’s Group Genius I think it become clear the differences between the randomness and organized.

Surowiecki’s thesis, or at least my reading of it, is that you can take a random group of 100 or so people and they will more times than not give you a better solution than an individual. Of course his argument comes with caveats. Sawyer’s argument is that even in organized settings, we work better collaboratively than we will going solo. Again there are always exceptions… but what he makes clear is that the argument is that you don’t have to have to have the smartest people in your organization to be the smartest organization… what you really need is a cohesive and competent group comprised of smart (not necessarily the smartest) people. This, of course, goes against the argument we are now hearing coming from Wall Street and their compensation packages…they have to retain their talent, that is why they get the $100 mill bonus. I realize in some instances there are people on wall street that could take $1 bill in clients with them if they walk…maybe it is justified to pay them a bonus (maybe). But some of the smartest, greatest, etc people out there are totally socially retarded, and injecting them into any organization to work solo or in a group does nothing but kill cohesiveness and productivity.

All that being said, the terms of crowdsourcing, mass collaboration, collaboration, wisdom of crowds, crowds, etc, are all very confusing and often used in the wrong situations. There are great uses for all of these collaborative schemes, but choosing when to use one will become the great leadership decision of the future (if it isn’t already).