Collective intelligence: The future of scaling business.
In the global business landscape, the term ‘enterprise’ has always held a sort of professional mysticism. Whether it’s the multinational giants or a centralised business that boasts a one-hundred-thousand strong workforce, we’re naturally inclined to look on with awe at the size and scale of these giants. After all, as business professionals, we look to those above us and hope that our chosen pathway will lead us to achieve the same operational scope as the companies that underpin our society.
But what we rarely consider is how that pathway or the process by which a business moves from small to large to enterprise operations is constantly changing. The route of many modern enterprise businesses stands in stark contrast to those that came before them. Whether through changing societal conditions, or landmark advances in technology, the battle lines for growth are being redrawn at an ever-increasing rate.
Once, the internet was thought to be the single greatest conduit for business upscaling ever created. Now we face the potential of frontier concepts such as artificial intelligence and its possibility to foster positive growth in areas we’ve never even considered.
To open a dialogue about a small component of the larger conversation around artificial intelligence and its applications for business upscaling, consider the power of AI-driven collective intelligence for a moment.
In a similar vein to how large-scale enterprise businesses have grown with the power of the internet, the collective intelligence sphere, too, has consistently thrived over the past few years, enabled in many ways by its applicability to the potential offered by AI-driven systems.
And in a time where many enterprise businesses are searching tirelessly for the missing link between AI and growth, maybe the answer lies in the collective intelligence networks which utilise this technology every day?
The power and importance of collated group thought that has passed through the rigours of constant debate and evaluation cannot be understated when discussing growth strategy from the point of view of an upscaling company. In the fast-paced global business environment we now find ourselves in, the term ‘grow or die’ has moved from a light-hearted sentiment to a strictly enforced mantra that many professionals would say is the single greatest catalyst for their success.
But to achieve the speed of growth that many businesses now require to survive upscaling to enterprise levels, businesses must re-evaluate how they acquire expertise, where it comes from, and how it fits into the overall growth process. Collective intelligence is perfectly situated to cater to this need in a way that is much akin to the role that private consultancy currently fills in the large-scale business landscape. Where the two differ, though, is in what they offer to the growth process, with consultancy aiming for strict end-goal oriented applications, while collective intelligence concerns itself with the entire process from start to finish.
Rather than simply waiting until a problem presents itself and seeking the appropriate expert input to solve the issue, collective intelligence allows growing companies to predict and pre-empt problems using group thought and conjecture. We’ve already seen the widespread applications of this kind of process-based strategy in industries such as health services and crisis relief, where collective intelligence networks have led the way in isolating and highlighting issues long before their effects are felt. Add to this that the ever-expanding capability of AI-driven collective intelligence has allowed many collectives to expand their capacity to solve problems and provide preventative input, and the potential for businesses to upscale in new and innovative ways becomes clear.
But how do we begin incorporating collective intelligence into growth strategy, and where will this effort ultimately lead us?
The process of accepting collective intelligence into enterprise-goal growth strategy begins by taking a step back from the traditional problem-oriented mindset and instead seeking to augment the processes that facilitate growth on a more open-plan level. Collective intelligence has already proven its worth for many cutting-edge businesses in recruitment, product optimisation and even multinational expansion. But the objective for any business wishing to incorporate collective intelligence into their holistic growth strategy should be to find the areas where collective input can provide the most value. Adopting such a view and embracing the potential of collective intelligence to work as an adaptive growth driver throughout multiple streams of an upscaling business will give business owners the power to apply expert input in areas where it matters most.
The potential that collective intelligence has to broaden the horizons of businesses invested in upward growth is profound, and with proper application and consistent revision, the input of expert networks could become the single greatest tool that any aspiring business has to reach enterprise heights.
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