Customer Reviews

We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business

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Are you getting those "what's this Web 2.0 stuff" questions at work? Does the boss want to know why s/he should be considering how social networking can help the business? Barry Libert and Jon Spector can answer some of those questions in the book We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business. It's a bit "rah rah" in nature, and it actually failed in its initial goal. But this small volume should be more than enough to get your management thinking in the right direction...

Contents:
How We Got Here; Look What We Can Do; Go from R&D to R&WE; How May We Help We?; Customer, Sell Thyself; If We Build It, We Will Come; Welcome to the World Bank of We; Make Everyone a C-We-O; Lead from the Rear; Afterword - Join the Crowd; Company Index; Name Index; Subject Index; Acknowledgments

The general idea in We is that no one single person or organization can have all the right answers. It's only as you invite others into the conversation that you will make dramatic leaps in customer involvement and ownership. These invitations often show up these days in web sites using tools such as discussion forums, community volunteer help desks, wikis, etc. The "crowds" know more than you do, and they are often quite willing to be part of your success if you'll let them. Take Amazon.com for example... a huge differentiator is their customer review feature (of which this review will be part of as soon as I'm done). Why do people contribute their time and effort on reviews of items when it only serves to help Amazon sell more? Because people are passionate about what they like and dislike, and they want their voice to be heard. This "wisdom of the crowds" enables others to get a more complete view of a product, and that ability drives traffic and sales. The reviewer feels good, the buyer has a better experience, the manufacturer is happy (provided the review was a good one), and Amazon draws more traffic. This is but one example of many that are covered in the book, and its worth the small investment of time to go through the 150+ pages.

When I said the book failed in its initial goal, that's not necessarily a bad thing. The authors actually wanted this book to write itself using wikis and discussion forums for each chapter. The profits of the sales would then be donated to charities, with the contributors determining the percentage of what went where. The profit thing worked, but there still needed to be the traditional writer, editor, etc. in order to get everything to actually end up on the shelf. But even at that, the input of hundreds of participants does come through in the pages, and it's a prime example of the "we" being smarter than the "me".

I also thought the book was a bit on the "this is all great and wonderful, and you need to do it now!" side. Techies will not find details on how to make this all happen, nor will you get a lot of deep philosophical discussion on the academic value of this approach. The writing is emotional, and is meant to touch the reader at a level that calls for some type of response. If you give this to your management (or if you're management yourself), you should come away understanding what "crowdsourcing" is all about, as well as how it has worked in other companies and organizations. From there, you can take the next steps towards nailing down your own personal action plan...

.. so it's good to know that there are many ways to capture the wisdom of audiences, co-workers and strangers who share a passion for whatever it is I'm doing. I'll take all the help I can get. In "We Are Smarter Than Me", Barry Libert and Jon Spector have put together a book that is both a primer in using social networks for businesses and individuals, and a prime example of what can be created by using them effectively.

While true "Web 2.0" geeks might find some of the examples a bit basic, most business people and civilians will be fascinated at how many examples fit their needs, and might even find the competition is ahead of them.

You can hear an interview with Barry Libert on The Cranky Middle Manager Show at http://cmm.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_cmm_20071103_118.mp3

It's disturbing what passes for a book these days. This book is a disjointed collection of quotes, lists, and sundry clipart.

Drawing on their social networking ideas and research, authors Barry Libert and Jon Spector drew upon more than 4,000 people to help write a book on how to make money from the wisdom of crowds.

Writing a book is hard enough, but coordinating the contributions of thousands must be a massive effort. Surprisingly the resulting effort is readable and insightful. The primary and secondary authors argue adapting social network to your business will drive decision-making and greater profitability.

The book shares case studies on product development, manufacturing, marketing, customer service, finance and management. After completing it, I had greater insights into business functions that can best be supported by social networks and communities; moderating the process, balancing structure with independence. I particularly enjoyed the authors' thoughts on managing risk and effective metrics.

I loved James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds and still highly recommend it. This book takes the next logical step. If social collaboration is going to infiltrate our personal and professional lives, there will have to be profit in it.

Slightly less than a decade ago, the Internet bubble was in full expansion, where even absurd ideas were given economic credence and assigned paper values of millions of dollars. Many believed that the Internet would revolutionize business. While that has taken place, albeit with a major bursting of the bubble of absurd expectations, the real revolution has been in social interaction. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow people from all over the world to socially interact. If you are around teenagers, you understand the depth of the phenomenon. Furthermore, you also realize how second nature such communication is to them.
The primary authors of this book have used that capability to develop it. By soliciting online contributions, they have received feedback and contributions from many people. Those messages have been incorporated into the book in a self-referential manner. For the subject matter is how businesses can use the social networking aspects of the Internet to improve their business practice.
For a few businesses, such interacts are critical to success; however for most, this use of the Internet would only supplement and improve their current business practices. There are many ways in which this can and has been done and the authors point out several success stories. They range from very small business to such corporate powerhouses as Procter & Gamble and Amazon.com. While they are generally on target, I have to disagree somewhat with one conclusion. On page 144, there is the statement, "Indeed, we believe that the corporation as it now exists, with its armies of salaried workers in identical cubicles will gradually disappear." While this is likely true for companies whose capital is knowledge, this will not happen for companies dealing in commodities. Although it is conceded that some change will take occur, it is hard to see how such profound changes will take place in companies such as the oil, gas, food processing and textiles industries.
This minor criticism aside, there is a great deal of solid wisdom that should be studied by everyone. I work as an instructor at a small college that is under stress due to the shrinking pool of traditional age freshmen. We know that we have to change our tactics if we are to keep our enrollments up. Even though higher education was not one of the industries explicitly mentioned, I identified several tactics that we could use to promote our department (mathematical sciences) as well as the college in general.

For starters, innovation networks are nothing new--companies have been outsourcing r&d for decades. Also, the book mentions Second Life, but if you have visited SL lately, you will notice that many of the areas are more like digital vacant lots than the slick innovation exchanges the book describes. Many complex issues surround intellectual property transfer, but the book glosses over them (check out "The Wealth of Networks" by Yochai Benkler for detailed description). Moreover, heirarchies have survived this long because they work and because not everyone wants to be a leader. The real challenge will be utilizing external networks in conjunction with in-house r&d (with all of its heirarchies and power structures).
Several other things (related to the video presentation on the review page):
(1) Retail investors are smarter than experts? I think he means index funds, which do not use "crowds" to make their allocations but are simply indexed to the overall market and adjusted automatically
(2) The Navy example---if memory serves me correctly, the investigators were not randomly chosen but were pre-screened for their mathematical ability

The most unique part of this book:

The entire book was community written - by members of the community. In their own words:

"In a time where community and social networks are starting to infiltrate every aspect of our personal and professional lives, WE decided to test the notion that a book of business best practices could be written by "the crowd," and we are excited to have participated in this groundbreaking experiment."

With strong backing from MIT, SharedInsights (Barry Libert), Prentice Hall and Wharton, this book was written in wiki style with hundreds of contributors.

Who's this book for?
1. If you are in marketing, customer service, or product development in any large organization and are looking to present a case to your management team about the value of building a community, this book is a must read. It will give you a great set of case studies to present.

2. If you are interested in learning more about crowdsourcing and themes around community driven businesses this book is a good read.

3. If you are looking to write a book about social networks and communities and social media or the User generated content theme / metaphor, pick up a copy of this book as a reference or citation.

Here's what I really liked about the book:
1. Lots of examples. From P&G to Brewtopia, this book has a lot of "real world" examples of how companies have been able to successfully tap into the power of the community to create value.

2. Tangible case studies: Since there are many examples, you can get practical tips on how to start a community, grow and let your community thrive.

What I thought the book missed the mark on:
1. The main points were lost because of so many examples. It was not easy at all to connect the main points, key assumptions and supporting facts. Since there were many examples how customers use communities it tends to be just a lot of case studies but leaves the reader to connect the dots. Maybe there's a sense of discovery you might get from this as a counterpoint.

2. The value of editing. I am always amazed when I see final copies of a book especially after I saw the author's pre-release copy. Editors rock. This book would have benefited from a stronger editorial influence.

3. There's a place for online connection, and this book missed that. I prefer books that are "living" to ones that are written once and done with. What I mean by that is when book authors continue the conversation and provide relevant links on a website that makes the book a living project. I think the website wearesmarter makes an attempt at that, but the examples could be brought to live with interviews, podcasts and updates from the companies that were featured in the examples.

Overall a very quick (2 hour or less) read. Recommend you get a copy.

The book turns out to be more like a pamphlet: superficial, one/few liners.
It would be nice as a presentation, but as a book it is too pretentious.
However, it does provide a convenient list of ideas to "unleash the power of crowdsourcing"

I cannot believe this book was published by Wharton School Publishing. The main point could be delivered as a page of news clip, another page of index including link to the crowdsourcing websites being described. This book is just a list of websites, no in-depth analysis of crowdscourcing phenomena. This book is full of information about crowdsourcing websites, but no knowledge about crowdsourcing.

I felt this was an introduction to crowd-sourcing with some nice examples. It didn't get much into the mechanics of how to make it work or potential traps. Good light reading, but nothing truly special.