Some of the greatest potential of social media lies in its ability to facilitate collaboration (Image: Japanese Light Bulb by emburke07). This ability to leverage multiple minds towards a greater, better solution — the harnessing of our collective intelligence — holds much hope for communities, businesses, nations and even the world alike (see the book and companion blog Wikinomics for discussion). At the same time, sometimes “groupthink” environments can go astray and turn into echo chambers and losing their value as idea markets (see book Honest Signals for discussion).
For marketers, idea markets have become fantastic tools for actively engaged communities. They provide customers a voice to engage companies and discuss current and potential products, suggest value added additions, vet issues, and discuss service environments. Better engagement with stakeholders yields to better results for all parties.
Idea markets occur publicly in social networks like Twitter, or in more productive focused environments like Dell’s Idea Storm, Nokia’s Mosh and My Starbucks Idea. These collaborative environments also work well inside corporations and in nonprofit initiatives like the Spot.Us community funded reporting project, the oft questioned and even more often cited Wikipedia or the Brooklyn Museum’s Click Exhibition.
However, one word of caution, if the community is exploited and does not find its own reward for participating, it can abandon the idea market (special thanks to Beth Kanter for pointing this weakness out and some nonprofit examples). There are ways around that issue. Incentive programs can be used to provide a WIFM (What’s In It for Me) result. There are even for purchase crowdsourcing networks and tools like InnoCentive.
Harnessing idea markets means understanding the dynamics of groupthink. Humans have multiple ideas, but an echo chamber can conquer or bury other ideas in the spirit of popularity and cliques. In reality, while the groupthink shows a strong indication that once concept is more worthy than others this tendency prevents other ideas from being vetted intelligently. This can be particularly troublesome if the idea is flawed or special interests are at play. In essence, the “Wisdom of the Crowds” can go awry in the dynamics of human behavior.
Want an example? Today is MLK day (image by emdot). The reason we have this holiday is to celebrate a man who rose up and said no more. He had to because historically this nation embraced slavery, and then after the civil war continued its legacy with Jim Crow laws and separation. A majority of Americans allowed these human rights violations to occur. WHile this did not occur online, it did happen in the our greatest idea market of all, the national consciousness.
For an organization, understanding these dynamics is critical. More minds are better than one, yet human behavior can cause problems. So the marketer must rise above the fray and leverage collaborative environments with a full understanding of potential pitfalls. Here are some ways to conquer off groupthink:
What would you add?
Interesting discussion.
The biggest issue with groupthink and echo chambers is that, as you mention, minority perspectives get drowned out and mob rule wins. In most cases, insight comes from the valued contribution of a few really interesting insights or perspectives that come from the periphery of the general understanding.
From the user’s perspective, context matters quite a bit…using your MLK example, different words should come to mind about MLK while understanding the perspectives of African Americans, native Africans, Indian freedom fighters, Confederate Southerners, etc. You lose a lot of color when you try to get all perspectives to fit into a narrow framework.
Channeling the wisdom of crowds in a way that is contextually relevant will be the next challenge. We’ve an example of this at HealthShoppr.com, where we help consumers find healthcare professionals (massage therapists for v1) who’s messages are targeted to different audiences based on contextual cues about their practice (ie pregnancy specialists, pain specialists, deep shiatsu training, etc). The organization of crowd information will be the next wave that pulls us back from the chaos that is Web 2.0 into usable information relevant to specific user needs.
Simply allowing for a minority voice may not be enough. If we look closely at your great historical example, you will see that there was always a “voice” of the minority one way or another. It just wasn’t always empowered.
So how to we empower the voice of the minority? Incentivize it? Publicize it? Connect it to a popular voice? Listen to it?
In a group context, this seems to be a huge issue.
As always a thought provoking post Geoff.
I hadn’t heard of “Honest signals” (another book to add to the growing list. Lol)
I think one of the challenges of the collaborative environment (online) as opposed to one where people are face to face is the one you highlight about all voices being heard.
In a real world environment you have an effective facilitator whose job it is to ensure that all comments/ideas are extracted from those attending.
Preferably prior to the commencement some thought has been given to the “types” of people involved. Whether we are talking Myers Briggs or Belbin or some other method its always useful to create teams with a variety of skills, behaviours and thought processes.
Perhaps there is some way of looking at online behaviour and tying in to the various belbin/myers types? That would be useful. Similar to the work done by Charlene li maybe but with a deeper psychological angle?
Alternatively, if you know the people in the online collaborative environment, a good facilitator should reach out to solicit comment from someone who is not as vocal as others.
Perhaps through the process of registering (or similar) questions could be asked which would help understand more about the people involved (I always advise clients that the place to start is with knowing more about your customers / ideal client – similar thing I guess).
Vijay, Tiffany and Mike: It think we’ve really surrounded a key issue. How to value minority opinions without necessarily dismissing them or adopting them. How do we vet them intelligently. This is something that groupthink does not successfully achieve, so management of such environments becomes difficult. Digg has overmanaged this into the ground. They’ve killed their popularity and growth. So what do you do? Tough questions!
Geoff-
Great post. As the manager of Dell’s IdeaStorm, these are questions and issues I deal with on a daily basis. I think it’s critical to not over-manage online conversations because it is often a losing battle.
In reviewing ideas, the high vote value is the easiest way to prioritize importance. However, in searching on particular topics, we often find good ideas that are in the minority and take them under consideration. I’m sure we miss many of them because they do not make the radar screen.
Also, the conversations online will always be different than any conversation in person. As Mike said – a Meyers Briggs analysis of people online versus in person would be very interesting indeed!