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The concept of "collective intelligence" is simple — it asserts that if a team performs well on one task, it will repeat that success on other projects, regardless of the scope or focus of the work. While it sounds good in theory, it doesn't work that way in reality, according to an Iowa State University researcher.
Marcus Credé, an assistant professor of psychology, says unlike individuals, group dynamics are too complex to predict a team's effectiveness with one general factor, such as intelligence. Instead, there are a variety of factors — leadership, group communication, decision-making skills —that affect a team's performance, he said.
Anita Woolley's research supporting collective intelligence quickly gained traction in the business world when it was first introduced in 2010. The attention was not surprising to Credé. Because organizations rely heavily on group work, managers are always looking for a "silver bullet" to improve team performance, he said. However, after re-analyzing the data gathered by Woolley and her colleagues, Credé and Garett Howardson, an assistant professor at Hofstra University, found the data didn't support the basic premise of collective intelligence. Their work is published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
[Source]: You would not ask a firefighter to perform open-heart surgery
Do you agree with this premise?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:47AM
Was a 70-80 year old DD guy named Lyon.
He would always take the full time to do an assignment, occasionally asking me for help. However, unlike most of the people in class, who were of average or 'superior' intelligence, he had spent a lifetime working through problems due to his 'slowness' and while he had trouble understanding or memorizing things at first, he was much better at learning from his mistakes and not making the same ones over again.
In contrast, many of the other people who asked for my help would ask the same questions every few hours/days and end up STILL making the same mistakes by the time they submitted their assignments, because they thought they were smart and 'got it' and didn't take the time to either mentally or physically repeat or experiment with what was needed to memorize it.
Long story short: He got an A in the class. I got a C (ended up helping other people so much I didn't get all my own assignments completed.) And many of the rest ranged from Bs to Ds.
Collective Intelligence doesn't mean working outside of your knowledge base. But it does mean utilizing the strengths of each member of a group, and in an ideal world, admitting to your own weaknesses so your fellow team members can make up for your weaknesses as you can make up for theirs, even if it is running errands or tending to the team's nutritional needs, or just making sure they get some sleep once in a while.
Sadly in our salary based culture this often doesn't happen because people are too concerned with personal achievements for advancement, and many good, but not necessarily 'innovative' or 'technically skilled' workers' accomplishments for the group are overlooked in both salary and contribution to the success of the whole. Plenty of places where this is/was not true, but it seems to happen far more with every passing year.