Ann Greenberg, a computer visionary, cofounder of Gracenote (acquired by Nielsen), and an avid proponent of democratizing media, recently said that “The most compelling aspect of the digital age is the two-way communication that can be achieved with technology. The Internet is the most democratic structure one can imagine. Power is inverted and rises from the bottom up.”
That power of communication from the bottom up has been magnified by recent advancements in AI applications for healthcare, government, and business. These AI-powered technologies were also spurred by the onset of the worldwide pandemic, which drove everyone to greater dependency on the Internet. Now, instead of just two-way, one-on-one conversations, people can have multiple, threaded conversations that evolve over time.
One direct benefit of multiple, threaded conversations is the opportunity to discover and examine new ideas. And not only new ideas, but also opinions that might run counter to one’s beliefs and opinions.
Beyond the discovery of new ideas and opinions, one might be able to learn the reasons people hold these beliefs. This kind of evolving exchange resembles what we know undergirds the democratic process: a back-and-forth townhall exchange that thanks to the Internet can scale to engage the entire population of a community or a nation.
The democratic process also works to promote better outcomes because it takes into account all points of view and aligns the best ideas for taking further actions. Not only governments but also companies and organizations can adopt a similar process to democratize the sharing of ideas…from the bottom up.
That’s the mission of CrowdSmart.ai’s platform, which works asynchronously to help teams align with each other by leveraging its AI technology to engage employees, customers, and partners to identify and prioritize the best ideas about products, features, investment, mergers, and anything that requires a decision. By surfacing diverse perspectives from participants, CrowdSmart reduces bias, identifies critical insights and risks, and unifies individual thoughts and preferences into clear recommendations.
A platform like CrowdSmart that promotes democracy of ideas in the workplace can continually improve decision making while building institutional knowledge for long-term competitive advantage.
