Two heads are better than one

An old, well-known proverb means that some problems may be solved more easily by two people working together than by one working alone. This statement may be obvious to everyone reading it, but industries are changing at this very moment without companies realizing it.

Not only in Western culture, we understand that “two heads are better than one”, meaning two people have better chance at solving a problem than just one of them. In Chinese, there is a similar saying: “三个臭皮匠,凑个诸葛亮”. Literally translated, it means “three smelly tanners form one Zhu Ge Liang.” 诸葛亮 (Zhu Ge Liang) was one of the greatest statesman and military strategist in Chinese history. This Chinese proverb does not question Zhu Ge Liang’s abilities by comparing him with three ordinary people. It says one ordinary person does not make one Zhu Ge Liang (the expert). But three humble laborers brainstorming make a great statesman: the more people there are, the greater the intelligence and the wisdom becomes.

Nowadays, computational capacities are rising tremendously. People are interacting over the internet the longer the more to share their knowledge and their own capacities. This mixture nurtures collective wisdom. Linux, Wikipedia and many other business cases show that collaboration can change industries. Can collective wisdom result in a same effect? Can ten thousand users solve problems better than an expert? Aren’t most of the users completely unqualified for this? What will happen to our experts, who were the best available resource of knowledge until now? What is now the best source of knowledge? Is it the wisdom of crowds, a group of experts or maybe a symbiosis out of these two?

There are many discussions about all these questions ongoing. In addition to that crowdsourcing, expert squeeze and social software pop up from time to time in these discussion. We will present and discuss several of these topics, terms and buzz words in future blog posts. Just click on the button “Crowd vs. Expert“.