Are we condemned to individual intelligence and collective incapability?

The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.

Albert Einstein
Why do so many human organizations? (1) such as companies, governments, administrations, associations, etc…, that are composed of smart and sensible individuals, act in silly and even destructive ways at the collective level, often against the very will of their own participants?

Why don't large organizations have the same flexibility and adaptability as small groups of people? Is the fact they are big the real cause of this dysfunction?

Are operational effectiveness as defined by parameters including objectives reaching, project management, etc… and democracy at odds with each other? If the answer is yes, then we must also admit to the startling conclusion that a democratic country is not manageable. If we reply no, then why are companies and organizations in general not democratic spaces?

Why has the free software community, without any hierarchy and decisional center, begun to make products that have higher performance than those of the private industry?

When writing "What interests me is not the happiness of all men; it's the happiness of each man", Boris Vian declared individual and collective stakes as irreconcilable. But if we postulate that individual happiness is desirable, what gives us the assurance that the happiness of one person will not be harmful to the happiness of another? Is acting for the collective good possible only at the price of individual alienation? Is acting for oneself systematically harmful for the community? Are individual and collective interests reconcilable?

Whether the problem is global warming, the decline in biodiversity, world peace, education, healthcare, commerce, employment, technology breakthrough or any other, none of these can be described and understood in their wholeness by organizations as we know them today. They cannot be solved because we are not sufficiently intelligent at the collective level. Who, in daily life, doesn't suffer from the lack of collective intelligence? Are we condemned to individual intelligence and collective incapability?

Is it possible today, with potent information technologies (ITs) and communication capabilities of cyberspace, to organize individual intelligences into new social organizations that are able to catalyze a true global collective intelligence that could embrace and then transform the complexity of the world into a manageable landscape?

There is no doubt that Collective Intelligence is now lurking and being expressed just beneath the surface of the questions we are raising. Humanity's stakes rely less in the nature of the issues than its capacity to invent social structures able to solve them, which makes Collective Intelligence a survival stake for humankind.

This is the reason why in the last few years Collective Intelligence is becoming a full discipline?, with a theoretical frame, a practical know-how, defined research domains, methodologies, and heuristics. Its aim is to maximize the range of action and the potential for freedom of human communities in a context where most challenges we meet appear too complex to be solved, at least with our present organizations. Collective Intelligence develops the levers of universal governance and aids in acquiring the ability to pilot in the capricious weather of complexity. Isn't it worth investing efforts and means? Wouldn't states, enterprises, institutes, universities and countless others find some advantage in investing their money to offer themselves the means of their own evolution, not to say their own survival?

The aim of this article is to present a quick tour outlining the stakes involved and the development of such a Collective Intelligence. Note that the capitalized term Collective Intelligence is used when referring to its emergent and global level. This will be studied in more detail below.

After a review of the different forms of collective intelligences, we then will explore the state of the art of this discipline. What are its stakes? Who are the players?

We conclude with how such concepts affect our daily life. How can we, in our present social and professional life, concretely augment our collective intelligence? What training is required to accomplish this? What individual actions are necessary? What should be expected?

Of course one can obtain only a general view of this topic in the limited space of this article. This is an invitation to a fascinating journey. If this practical guide – which raises more unanswered questions than solutions – arouses your curiosity and gives you the desire to participate in this beautiful adventure, then it will have achieved its goal here.

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Notes:
(1) We will use 'organizations' as a generic term to refer to companies, administrations, societies, institutions… in other words a whole organized as such.

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