Experts wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica, and it ruled for 250 years. Then amateurs wrote Wikipedia.
On Who Want’s to be Millionaire, “Call the expert” helpline results in 57% accuracy. “Ask the audience” gives 94% accuracy.
There will be always a need for experts. However, on some tasks crowds consistently outperform experts.
- Crowd-creation
A large diverse crowd beats an expert at generating ideas.
The crowd has access to more pools of knowledge, more networks, more sources of inspirations. Crowds have more ideas and leads to work with. - Crowd-labor
Who are your global competitors? How do they run their businesses?
Sure an expert can google thousands of sites in dozens of languages and get you the answers. But a crowd will get you better answers faster. - Crowd-prediction
What’s the best price for a given market? What the best design?
Ask a crowd and their average prediction will be more accurate than the prediction made by an expert. - Crowd-outreach
Need to find local distributors? Test demand in dozens of new markets?
Using a crowd to solve your problem is like sending thousands of ants to search for food. If there is something good out there, they will find it.