Collective Intelligence

There's a shift occurring, it's affecting the way we learn, the ways we interract and the way we trade.

In my original line of business, design approval depended on face to face meetings, this involved travel and costly proofing methods that invariably created envirionmental waste.
I remember thinking at the time, (some 8 years ago) that we needed to create a virtual system of approval that avoided unrequired travel and the cost to the environment. Such a system would enable people involved in the sign off and approval process to see a common image, under common conditions and be able to add comments as required.

There's a saying that goes 'there's nothing new under the sun' and this was proven to me a few years ago when I met the man who had recieved the same idea at the same time I did and acted on it out of his frustration and belief that things had to change.
His invention is brilliant and applicable across many disciplines that require approval, from building, to retail, to medicine, to education, to development, the list of potentials for this are endless.

So, like many problems we face as individuals, you can be sure that someone has thought of a solution and is actively, passionately and often without support, working away in the background to create the solution we're all seeking.
Bob's invention means that clients in many countries at any one time can sign off digital proofs in real time, saving fortunes in time and travel costs.
Likewise, there are people working away in the background on issues like hunger and poverty, disease, the environment, all the big issues that cause us local and global problems today are in effect opportunities for advancement.
I heard once that the word 'problem' comes from 'problema' which means something thrown forward! an opportunity to learn perhaps?

The point of my blog is that we have a built in collective intelligence this is highlighted when we discover and work with (as opposed to going against) common value sytems and when these are in turn combined in the right conditions, we can find and co-create solutions beyond the level of thinking that created the problems in the first place.

In short, none of us are as smart as all of us.

My own piece of problem solving first came in the form of a dream, in it I saw all of us having the choice of adding a tiny % onto the things we buy, by doing this we would generate a constant fund to be used to tackle the big issues of our time.
When I proposed this as a practical solution to economists and accountants, they each suggested we could raise $300m per day using this idea and there in create a sustainable fund to address issues like hunger and poverty, however the most important factor is that whatever we do ... we do it this collectively. A problem shared is a problem halved!

If we continue to dump responsibility upon governments, businesses and NGO's, we are in effect disempowering the collective intelligence we share, and sadly, there's a social price to pay for this.

This is my own 'work in progress' and doubtless something that will appear 'obvious' once applied universally, however, like most inventions or discoveries, this was born out of a desire to see sustainable, positive change being created by all and shared by all.

Until we all win ... we all lose.