Collective Intelligence: Smarter together

The book ‘Collective Intelligence’ recently hit the shelves. Co-author Wendy Jansen is a researcher in organizational science and information management. She became fascinated by the similarities between our brain and organizations, and wondered how animals, with usually very small brains, are capable of often doing incredibly smart things. Termites build entirely air-conditioned structures, birds rapidly pick up enemies in their swarms, and ants locate food via odor maps of their environments. This is what we call collective intelligence.

Thanks to the internet and mobile social technologies people are more easily becoming progressively more connected to each other, thereby rapidly creating a global collective intelligence. This intelligence doesn’t only consist of networks of people, but also increasingly of smart devices. Suppliers of healthcare technology also want to help caregivers make better usage of connected devices and health data in order to provide more personalized care and better general healthcare outcomes. It is generally expected that the world of Big Data will provide more insight into the development of diseases, thereby changing the overall picture of healthcare delivery.

It is important that everyone living in these times understands that the world is changing and evolving towards a collective intelligence of people and machines. It seems clear that we should learn from the mechanisms developed by the animal kingdom to adapt to environmental factors. The aim is to develop intelligent collective behavior that is in service of the survival of the species. This book describes, in an understandable way, how insights into animal behavior can be translated into solutions for people and organizations in a wide range of market segments.

The book is available in bookshops or well-known web shops such as the Dutch Bol.com