Friday, April 29, 2011

Crowd Wisdom doesn't work here. Why?

'Crowd wisdom' always tends to gravitate towards mediocre and safe. And this is by nature. Majority voting might be good for politics or solving communal issues, but it is quite useless when it comes to judging creativity and innovation.

Henry Ford once said about the value of marketing research: if I were to ask my future clients what they really wanted, they would have answered - faster horses!

In my opinion, 'creative' ideas that get the majority vote on 'public creativity' websites (such as Jovoto, My Pitch, Idea Bounty, etc.) are mostly dull and utterly conventional.

(Even public product innovation sites such as Kickstarter or Quirky fail to produce anything original or substantial, beyond ideas for new pen holders or mobile phone covers.)

Why? Good question.

Is it because the majority (by default!) consists of 'amateur creatives' who seek approval by faithfully imitating the 'professionals'? (And we know that the professional conventional advertising is mostly crap.)

Or is it because where there's a big crowd, there always comes element of politics into play?

Or maybe because these platforms aren't about innovation & creative ideas, but just another marketing 'public participation' tools to create 'followers'?

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