Firms have long used teams to solve problems: focus groups to explore customer needs, consumer surveys to understand the marketplace and annual meetings to listen to stockholders. But the words "solve," "research," "comprehend" and "listen" have now taken on a whole new significance. Truly, the increasing use of information markets, wikis, crowdsourcing, "the wisdom of crowds" notions, social networks, collaborative software and other Web-based tools makes up a paradigm shift in the way that many businesses make decisions. Call it the emerging age of "Decisions 2.0."
At the absolute minimum, managers should consider the following crucial issues: loss of control, diversity versus expertise, betrothal, policing, intellectual property and mechanism design. By comprehension such important problems, companies like Affinnova, Google, InnoCentive, Marketocracy and Threadless have successfully applied Choices 2.0 programs for a variety of purposes, including research and development, market research, customer service and knowledge direction. The bottom line is this: For many issues a company faces, there could well be a solution out there somewhere, far outside of the traditional places that managers might hunt, within or outside the organization. Tap into it and then the trick, though, will be to develop the right tool for finding that source.
PUBLICATION DATE: January 01, 2009 PRODUCT #: SMR302-PDF-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about LEADERSHIP & MANAGING PEOPLE
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