The Crowd: Intelligent or Stupid?

小編悄悄話：這是上週六我們刊登在工商時報”世界公民weekly”--我的世界觀--單元的一篇文章，連續幾週的世界觀洗禮，希望這一系列的內容對您都有幫助！請持續鎖定接下來的精彩內容，每個禮拜六我們工商時報上見！

文/Jessie湯
“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” -- Eric Steven Raymond
“No one in this world, so far as I know, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." -- H. L. Mencken

Outsourcing？這個字已經落伍了，把工作交給印度或中國人已經是2003年的事了。現在有新的概念crowdsourcing：全世界各地用自己空閒時間創造內容、解決問題，甚至一起進行研發的每個人。《連線》（Wired）雜誌編輯Jeff Howe和Mark Robinson幾年前就共同提出了一個創新名詞－「群眾外包」（crowdsourcing），因為他們不斷看到各行各業的大企業開始將重要工作外包給網上的個人或群體，他們預言，「群眾外包」這種「運用（網上）群眾的潛在能力」，將快速滲透到所有商業層面，成為經營模式的一項新選擇。

當年，還有一個重要事件，就是「開放程式碼」（open sourcing）的風行。鼓吹者Eric Steven Raymond就提出「Linux’ Law」－「只要參與的人夠多，任何有問題處都會現形。」（“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”）這個觀念也鼓吹「群眾外包」的魅力，推翻了過去認為群體思維只是取最大公因數、群體決策容易失敗的印象。試想：全球超過十億名個人在網路上彼此討論你的問題，其中包括了你的供應商和顧客，其凝聚的智慧和能力，怎不讓競爭者黯然失色？

之後，有一本書也開始探討這個話題，書名叫作《我們比我聰明》（We Are Smarter than Me）。此書大力倡導「群眾智慧」（wisdom of crowd）和「群眾外包」的神奇，認為看似如散沙般的群眾智慧，將在各行各業中進行創新改革，令人驚豔！值得一提的是，這本書的撰寫過程也是「群眾外包」和「群眾智慧」的具體實踐－整本書是由華頓商學院與史隆商學院的教授、學生們，利用短短一年的時間，在網路的開放空間中撰文討論，最後集結而成，顛覆了由作者自行蒐集資料寫作的傳統出書模式。

《群眾的智慧》（The Wisdom of Crowds）作者James Surowiecki相信，群眾的智慧絶對大於個人，無論這個「個人」有多麼smart！他說：
“Experts, no matter how smart, only have limited amounts of information. They also, like all of us, have biases. It's very rare that one person can know more than a large group of people, and almost never does that same person know more about a whole series of questions. The other problem in finding an expert is that it's actually hard to identify true experts. In fact, if a group is smart enough to find a real expert, it's more than smart enough not to need one.”

不過，他也知道，群眾的力量要充分發揮，必須有一些先決條件：
“There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer. It needs a way of summarizing people's opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks.”

已經有不少企業應用某種形式的網路社群來「汲取」「群眾智慧」，進行「群眾外包」。亞馬遜網路書店（Amazon.com）可能是史上第一個。該公司在網站上建立讀者書評功能，書評沒有稿費，公司也不干預，原本的考量只是想藉此吸引一群忠實顧客前來，卻意外幫助亞馬遜發展出其他獲利模式。

英國的ZOPA則是「群眾外包」概念應用於金融業的例子。ZOPA是一家直接金融網路公司，提供一個網路平台，讓想存款賺取利息的人（lender）或想借錢的人（borrower），都能到這個平台上來直接議價撮合，免除傳統銀行居間賺取利差的機會，使存借雙方皆能得到更為優惠的利率。ZOPA為Zone of Possible Agreement的縮寫，意即「可能的成交區間」。買賣雙方在議價中訂定可接受的範圍，雙方的範圍若有重疊，即代表有ZOPA存在，也就是存在著成交的可能。

不過，水能載舟亦能覆舟，「群眾外包」也有許陷阱和缺點。一篇名為「The wisdom (and danger) of crowds」文章中即指出：
“It's difficult for web-based organizations to screen crowd-sourced helpers. The result is often a glut of subpar work. Then, there’s the issue of accountability. Without a contract, set hours or direct supervision, volunteer tasks tend to be low-priority. Most worrisome of all is the risk of malice and mischief…The corruption of data would be problematic for any organization, but it is disastrous for those whose projects are used in crisis situations where lives are at stake.”

Surowiecki也說：
“Essentially, any time most of the people in a group are biased in the same direction, it's probably not going to make good decisions. So when diverse opinions are either frozen out or squelched when they're voiced, groups tend to be dumb. And when people start paying too much attention to what others in the group think, that usually spells disaster, too. For instance, that's how we get stock-market bubbles, which are a classic example of group stupidity: instead of worrying about how much a company is really worth, investors start worrying about how much other people will think the company is worth. The paradox of the wisdom of crowds is that the best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions.”
With hundreds of millions of new people coming online through the distribution of cell phones and handheld computing, crowdsourcing will continue to expand globally.

然而，群眾的心理因素肯定影響決策的正確性，因此想要運用「群眾智慧」的企業體必須特別避免群眾迷思的情況發生。

歡迎訂閱我們的電子報！請”點此”免費訂閱！