Blogg

Denna blogg finns bara på engelska.

Why the Many are smarter than the Few

I'm not shy to say that the headline is taken straight from one of my favorite books, "The wisdom of crowds", by James Surowiecki. I first read the book back in 2004 during a few years living in the UK, and even though I'd often thought about it as a favorite book, it wasn't until recently it gained on me how truthful it really was.

James Surowiecki debates that the collective wisdom of many average people, will always be smarter and come to a better conclusion than a few experts. This fact, he proves, is true in everything from stock market movements, finding lost submarines, to guessing the weight of a cow or solving other major obstacles.

But this book wasn't the start of the exciting journey we are about to embark on, but rather a part of realizing the solution to a big problem.

As many other ideas begin, mine also began with a failed attempt working on another idea. I had a fun evening project with my wife when Covid-19 hit the global economy, forcing us to pull the handbrake as we suddenly had to rethink everything. During an evening walk in April, when the gloomy world outlook and general uncertainties was around us, we discussed the challenges that we were facing and all the alternative solutions that didn't make any sense. We soon came to realize that not only were we limited with time (both working full time day jobs), but also with resources, invested money, spacing and last but not least, knowledge. The risk versus reward factor suddenly became too high to handle for an average family of 4 in this challenging environment.

The annoying fact was that this wasn't the first time I'd had ideas, but lacked enough courage, time, knowledge or network on how to move it from being an idea, to something more than just an idea. Being alone with your ideas was the largest barrier of moving it out of your head to something more. If this was true for me, I'm sure it was true for many other people around the world. How frustrating is that?

So this led me to ask the important questions.

How many great ideas have been lost, just because we were scared to speak about things we didn't fully understand, because we didn't have time to work on them alone, or because we simply couldn't solve all the issues by ourselves? How many ideas do we think about everyday and how many ideas could become something more than an idea? Only if they were connected with more people, together solving the huge challenge of moving an idea past the barrier of being only an idea.

If you read this far, I think most people realize they all had many ideas that stopped at being only an idea, and irrespective of the ideas being small or big, we are talking about a lot of ideas that never happened! A lot of ideas that all could have been something more than an idea given the right circumstances. Some could have made this world very different and possibly a lot better by creating companies, jobs, innovative products, services and a lot more.

To be smarter, stronger and come to better results by cooperating with many people around your ideas, rather than try to do, or to think about it all by yourself, will always end up as a better result. This is why collective feedback is super important and why the Many will always be smarter than the few experts that you will ask for feedback. The wisdom of the crowds has and will prove itself again.

With this in mind, the time has now come to use all our collective wisdom in a connected environment, to get more ideas past the barrier of being only an idea. In the best possible fashion we are launching the new social networking platform Bay of Ideas.

Bay of Ideas mission is to let people post all of their ideas in the easiest way and connect them with more people and key competencies that want to develop each idea to become something more than an idea. Posting your ideas at Bay of Ideas and connecting them with the collective wisdom, is a major step in moving ideas forward. No matter if it's starting a restaurant, improving a tool, developing a service or something really futuristic.

I'm humble and grateful to have Robert and Jonas with me as Co-founders to Bay of Ideas, building the platform that is needed to kick this off. Our collective work and wisdom is the start of a new journey that will ultimately lead to more ideas turning into reality and a progressive and better future for all.

Andy

Publicerad 2020-12-14