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There’s a better way to produce superior intellectual products – a less wasteful and time-consuming way – that creates lasting benefits for your organization and for the men and women who work there.  Intellectual products can range from simple ideas to full-blown plans – from concepts to global strategies.  The resources on this page will help you to understand how to eliminate the waste, degraded products and lost opportunity during the development of your intellectual products.

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Why Social Deficit is Expensive and What You Can Do About It

What Do Social Networks Have to Do With Inspired Collective Intelligence?

by Lewis E. Frees, Ph.D.

What comes to mind when you think of social networks? Linked-in? Face book? MySpace? The blogosphere? Chances are what does not come to mind is that social networks are the central nervous system of collective intelligence in your organization. They are far more than simply webs of connections in which individuals share information about themselves or, at most, post ideas for reaction?

Whether your knowledge requirements are complex (all the specialties required to bring a new product to market) or miniscule (a simple answer to a problem) the responsiveness and fluidity of your social networks are crucial to your success.

At their best, social networks coalesce the best thinking of individuals into a quality of wisdom that far exceeds what would be expected if contributions were simply aggregated. At their worst, they are purveyors of group-think: consensus at a low common denominator. At their best, they connect people to lofty values. At their worst, they reinforce all of the biases and baser instincts of their members. At their best, they trigger great riches of individual and collective intelligence. At their worst, they degrade the very talent, intelligence and expertise that they are designed to leverage.

There are many ingredients that when combined, create social networks that have the power to drive inspired collective intelligence. They are diverse. They leverage technology to keep people seamlessly connected. They recognize, attract and leverage the optimal “soup” of people from which to create collective wisdom. But there is one additional attribute that moves them up an additional notch and that is the subject of this white paper.

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