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We Are Smarter Than Me
Book

We Are Smarter Than Me

How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business

Barry Libert and Jon Spector
Wharton School Publishing, 2007
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

This book is an example of its own subject. The byline reads, “Barry Libert & Jon Spector and Thousands of Contributors.” The book, a product of crowdsourcing, reflects both the power and the problems of crowdsourcing. On one hand, it provides many examples of crowdsourcing in action from participants. Almost all of these sagas are success stories (even going so far as to make the reader wonder if some of the anonymous crowd members contributing could have been promoting the companies in the stories). The proliferation of examples demonstrates that crowdsourcing has made its mark in many business functions. On the other hand, the authors (the two writers, not the whole crowd) acknowledge that crowdsourcing has not worked for business management and strategy. Again, the book offers a parallel. The collective authorial voices contribute a lot of information, but they are less than successful in providing the book with a thematic flow, leaving it slightly choppy. However, as one crowdsourcing executive points out in the book, observers must take the bad with the good. Crowdsourcing certainly merits the attention of anyone in business, so getAbstract, all by itself, thinks that this concise, quick-to-read book should be on managers’ reading lists.

Summary

Social Work

Social networking is a huge phenomenon, with MySpace and Facebook growing rapidly, and millions of people writing and commenting on blogs and in virtual communities, such as Second Life. But social networks aren’t just about socializing; they have made a tremendous contribution to business. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia created by a crowd of unpaid collaborators; Linux is an operating system created much the same way. Procter & Gamble garners new product innovations from outsiders. Gold Corporation released geological data, and offered prizes to people who helped it find gold. The plan worked: The mining company found gold it otherwise could not have found.

This process is called “crowdsourcing.” It means, essentially, relying on numerous outside contributors (mainly online) to do work previously done by employees. Today, companies are leveraging the power of crowds for almost every process: product development, service, marketing, finance and management. Amazon.com pioneered crowdsourcing, now a pillar of its business strategy. It invested $2 billion to build a proprietary database and then opened it to the public. The crowd helped Amazon develop...

About the Authors

Barry Libert is CEO of an information service for business professionals. Jon Spector is vice dean and director of executive education at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

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