The wisdom of crowds

As the hazy outlines of the Conservative’s Big Society idea begin to harden into shapes like the divisive Free Schools project, some of its problems are coming sharply in to focus. In this time of historic budget cuts, competition for government spending will be fiercer than ever. Against this background, giving groups of citizens the opportunity to bid for pots of government money for their own purposes could be a recipe for disaster. Without the right structures, the Big Society could degenerate into the divided society as groups mobilise to claim their share of what’s on offer. And inevitably, it’s the most vulnerable, who lack the contacts, skills and resources who will lose out.

It’s timely then, that this month nef is launching its new Crowd Wise tool. Crowd Wise is a way for diverse groups of people to take complex decisions in which doesn’t pit one lot against another. Instead, it encourages people to find the common ground and take decisions which have the widest possible support.

Crowd Wise is built around two principles. The first of these is that anyone can have good ideas. Although the organiser gets to set the question – and in our pilots we’ve worked on everything from “what should be our strategic priority this year?” to “where should we put our football ground?” – all the possible answers come from the participants. Every group member has a chance to devise and improve the options on the table. It’s a far cry from the forthcoming electoral reform referendum where every detail of the options that the public will be allowed to vote on have been thrashed out in backroom deals.

The second principle is that the best idea is one which has support which is broad as well as deep. That’s why Crowd Wise doesn’t use traditional voting which lets the majority rule absolutely over the minority - or more commonly, lets the largest, most organised minority dominate all the other groups. Instead, it uses consensus voting where everyone rates all of the options. Consensus voting rewards options which gets broad support – even if they aren’t necessarily everyone’s first choice.

If the Big Society is going to be more than a carve-up of the resources of the state by self-interested groups of citizens, then it needs to find structures which encourage co-operation not competition. In the bigger picture, this might mean thinking again about the internal markets which put schools in competition for the brightest pupils and doctors in competition for the healthiest patients. But on the ground, it means making spaces for conversation and collaboration – and perhaps tools like Crowd Wise are a first glimpse of what that might look like.

Find out more about Crowd Wise

Photo by Hisako Tanaka via Flickr