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The Future of Crowds

Generally, the word crowd is associated with the pressing mash of a busy room of struggling people navigating to points beyond.  It is seldom a positive word.  Yet, as social science and business books have attested to — there is power in the crowd.  That power comes from the shared opinions of a variety of points-of-view.  If opinion and perspective are influenced by past and present environments, experiences and challenges, then crowds hold the promise of an illuminating force.

The future of crowds, and their ability to critique from a vast pool of past experiences and present thinking, seems to hold the prospect of reinventing stale business models.  Enabled by tools often bundled as Web 2.0, the force and future of crowd participation is primed to garner consumer input in all aspects of service and product design, production and marketing.  Crowd-powered sites such as Kiva for the investment power of crowds, Spot.us for self-funded journalism, GeniusCrowds making product development a team sport and Kickstarter to match art with money offer a glimpse of the marriage between mass action and business.  The power of large scale opinion, review, development and funding will drive the power of crowds to new levels in the business enterprise.

Leveraging the voice of the crowd will emerge as a source of personal direction and wisdom.  Napkin Labs now offers their Brainstorm app as an extension to a Facebook account.  Your social network now has the opportunity to advise you on the personal matter of your choice.  The voice of the crowd is and will be significant.

The question for leaders becomes — Can you handle the truth?  Crowd input is unfiltered, direct from consumer honesty.  If your hiring practices are weak, the crowd will highlight every insufficient plank of your platform on Glassdoor.  If your service is lacking, Yelp followers will wave off potential customers.  Crowds have a powerful opinion and they are not afraid to voice it.

The future of crowds, while uncomfortable, will bring leaders face-to-face with their personal and organizational strengths and weaknesses.  Rather than avoiding the crowd — join it!