mlm 0972 tribeqa designing collective intelligence systems

8/14/2019 MLM 0972 TribeQa Designing Collective Intelligence Systems

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The TribeQa Company

How To Build A Collective Intelligence System?A Common Sense Approach

a publication for Investors & Strategic Partners


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TribeQa owes much of the content of this presentation to twodiverse, but excellent papers:

Mapping the Genome of Collective Intelligence

by Thomas W. Malone and his group at MIT The Business Experiment by Rob May

The Business Experiment (BTE) offers a real-life experience whileasking tough questions on crowd-sourcing. MIT brings a deeperunderstanding of collective intelligence systems.

MIT = Centre for Collective Intelligence of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technologys Sloan School of Management

1.1- Acknowledgement


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TribeQa designs primarily new online business models for its own risk.After presenting the early beta versions, we seek financial andstrategic partners to accelerate expansion. All of our business casesincorporate some form of

collective intelligence of the smart crowd and/or

active crowd participation in strategy, operations anddecision-making

With our practical experience TribeQa also advises companies on howto set up social finance, online sales and other collectiveintelligence ventures.

1.2- What does TribeQa offer?


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Financial consumer brands have lost their credibility as trustedpartners. Consumers, however, see no viable alternatives, so theycontinue their business as usual. But the resentment againstbankers & brokers offers new initiatives a great opportunity.

TribeQa thinks that any viable alternative needs to incorporatesome sort of collective intelligence system. These systems are thebest in (a) capturing the needs of specific consumer groups and (b)harvesting the knowledge of employees (close client contact) andother stakeholders.

This approach ensures a much more consumer-centered operation,which could define a new or revive a tarnished brand.

1.3- Social Finance A New Paradigm?


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IS the crowd really smarter, all the time?

TribeQa feels that collective intelligence systems can be improvedeven more if the Crowd is selected on specific, but vital traits. For us,

the Smart Crowd is a talent pool of people with intelligent,independent-thinking, competitive, ambitious people having fun tocompete finding better solutions.

We recruit them from a broad spectrum of social, professional andgenerational backgrounds, avoiding the conformist GroupThink of the

Financial Establishment, that lied at the root of the Financial Crisis.

The Smart Crowd will outperform any expert,..... most of the time!

1.4- What is The Crowd?


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Fortunately collective intelligence has drawn a lot of academicinterest, but for TribeQa it is simply a common-sense tool to makelife easier for (financial) consumers and .... more profitable.

BTE: make your site useful even if you only have one user. Sites are

not useful, where users can share valuable stuff, unless there iscritical mass. Del.icio.us is useful even without the user base.

In the GroupIQ, we essentially created an investment decision-making tool that filters and validates the overkill of information. Wecreate order in the chaos by ranking the Top10% solutions and

integrating the superior products in solid designed personalportfolios, with all the advanced expertise under the hood.

This is valuable even for one user!

2.1- Making Life simpler?


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TribeQa designs collective intelligence systems from a relativelysmall set of building blocks. This framework is important in designingany system for collective action, be it a traditional organization or anew kind of online endeavor.

2.1- The building blocks of Collective Intelligence

MIT defines the building blocks as the answers

to one of the key questions associated with asingle task in the system.

Who is performing the task? Why are they doing it?

What is being accomplished? How is it being done?


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2.1- The building blocks of Collective Intelligence

MIT research of 250+ projects reveals a small set of main blocks

Who? Hierarchy or Crowd

Why? Incentives

Money/ Love/ Glory What? Create & Decide

How? Creating with or without the input of othersCollection /Contests/ Collaboration

Types Group DecisionsVoting/ Consensus/Averaging/ Prediction Markets

Types of Individual DecisionsMarkets/Social Networks


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In her research MIT has found that reliance on the crowd is a centralfeature of online collective intelligence systems. But, almost always,some form ofhierarchy is included in the decision-making process.

Hierarchy. In traditional hierarchical organizations, managers assign employeesto perform certain tasks. Linux community is not a traditional firm, Linus Torvaldsstill uses Hierarchy to decide which modules are included in the next release.

Crowd. Activities can be undertaken by anyone who chooses to do so, withoutbeing assigned by someone in a position of authority. Anyone can submit a modulefor possible inclusion in Linux.

2.2- Who? The Hierarchy or The Crowd


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Crowd models that depend on free contributions carry big risks. Peopleneed incentives to act: Love, Glory or Money.

MIT: What is novel about many of the collective intelligence systems thathave emerged in recent years is their reliance on Love and Glory, incontrast to traditional organizations, which have relied on Money as motivation.

TribeQa feels that money should be part of the equation. Especially

because as TBE noted intangible, long-term incentives might not be agood way to get people involved.

And even money will not suffice for rainmakers and opinion-leaderswith enough money, contacts & ideas. They simply lack the time. For

them sacrificing one hour is big and the marginal value of

money becomes less and less.

2.4- Why? The incentives for the Crowd


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In the GroupIQ strategic and investment solutions are rewarded byLove, Glory and Equity Points(!!). On the other hand, operationaltasks are rewarded by cash, Love, Glory and equity points.

The Top50 Producers share a 50% (!!!) stake in the company, therevenues and the profits. Also, we use solutions to reduce the TimeFactor for high-profile opinion-leaders

(MIT) Getting the motivational factors wrong could well be thesingle greatest factor behind failed efforts to launch new collectiveintelligence systems. Appealing to Love and Glory may reduce costs,

but could also provoke accusations of exploitation and freeloading.

2.5- Why? The incentives for the Crowd Part II


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The many organizational goals encountered in collective intelligencesystems can be boiled down into two basic activities.

Create - the crowd generates something newa piece ofsoftware code, a blog entry, a T-shirt design.

Decide - the crowd evaluates and selects alternativesdeciding on selections.

Each week, Threadless relies on the crowd to create a group of new T-shirt designs,and then decides which ones to produce through a combination of voting (by

anyone who is interested) and a hierarchical decision (by Threadless management).

2.6- What? The actions of the Crowd


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2.6- What? The actions of the Crowd Part II

Crowd production works most efficient if (a) work is divided in smallpieces (micro-chunks) and (b) the members get an understanding ofthe context associated with the work.

TBE: Crowds often do what is popular, fun, exciting, novel or cool. Crowds

don't make decisions that say "let's bite the bullet and endure thistemporary pain for the long-term benefit (look at the political systems).

In the GroupIQ project, TribeQa developed the whole system by itselffirst. The Crowd now gets the free hand to improve it within specificstrategy, quality and timeline constraints.

Because members can see the whole project, they have thecontext they need to improve the micro-chunked issues.


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In the Creation Process projects could use

Collections. Useful if it is possible to micro-chunk actions done independently bydifferent members of the crowd. In the GroupIQ members find great articles; clipvaluable opinions, and based on that define the right questions? Ergo, theycreate a large portfolio of valuable knowledge.

Contest. Useful if one needs to select a few top solutions. In the GroupIQ thecontest is the driving element on various levels, all because the challenge is tofind the best solutions out of large universe of opportunities.

Collaboration. Useful when micro-chunking becomes too difficult. On the

level of strategy the GroupIQ selects or layers the Crowd in smaller units whocollaborate on creating better solutions, headed by a senior member.

2.2- How? The Crowd Creates


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The complexity (risk) of the creation process is determined by the levelof collaboration (often under time pressure). Will the chain in the work-flows not be broken frequently, if dependency is high? How will youmanage a process like that, if members work for free?

MIT: Many collective intelligence systems still use hierarchies for some oftheir tasks, but what is novel is how they use crowds for Creationand Decision-making. A key {notion} ....is whether the different membersof the crowd make their contributions and decisions independently ofeach other or whether there are strong dependencies between their contributions.

In each project TribeQa analyses carefully what part of the work-flowcan be assigned to independent contributions and whichssues needs a collaborative effort.

2.2- How? The Crowd Creates Part II


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Who controls what? How much power is handed over to the Crowd?Always a hot debate as it defines the total enterprise.

Having decided on the power of the Crowd, the next question is howto organize the decision-making process. And this NOT a big problem;

many providers offering the tools for it. Normal, implicit or weighted voting Consensus

Averaging Marketocracy runs an investment portfolio selected by averaging

the opinions of the top 100 investors from over 55,000 on the website.

Prediction market Microsoft used it to estimate project completion. Within

minutes ,the market indicated a 1% probability of on time completion. Theproject ended up three months late.

2.2- How? The Crowd Decides


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TBE: The wisdom of crowds is a byproduct of other processes, not a process in and ofitself. You have to establish a process that allows people to make their own individual

decisions and reap the rewards and consequences of their decisions individually.

TribeQa tracks consumers making their normal day-to-day (financial)decisions and converts their actions into a market action (buy/sell).This feeds the system with important independent, personal inputthat will be much larger than the group of active members.

2.2- How-Individual Decision


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We have presented

the building blocks that make up the most crucial parts of any collectiveintelligence system.

some examples of how other projects have been doing it. (more on the website)

what kind of choices TribeQa made in the GroupIQ project.

We hope that the presentation starts giving some deeperunderstanding of the fascinating potential of crowd/employeeparticipation models.

2.2- The End. How To design Collective Intelligence Systems


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TribeQa seeks investors and strategic partners to improve andaccelerate new or existing projects by improving scalability,interactivity and personalization.

Being ahead of mainstream thinking, we realize that

Most investors/potential partners feel comfortable following the herd,especially in cases without high-profile managers.

Thus, our challenge is to identify, convince and recruit original-thinking crowd investors ($10.000), angel investors ($250.000) and

potential partners to launch and participate in other collectiveintelligence projects.

3.1- The End ! Really

mlm 0972 tribeqa designing collective intelligence systems

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