Have you ever wondered what is common in “community intelligence,” “swarm intelligence,” “smart mobs” and “tipping points”? According to market intelligence guru, Britton Manasco, they are all about a “drift toward potential innovations that draw on the unspoken and unanticipated knowledge of today’s (and tomorrow’s) customers.”
Frankly, I would have never thought of them that way. First, I was shocked by the concurrent obviousness and trickiness of his statement. Then, I got fascinated by the fertile questions that his thoughts give access to. I will tell you why, but to give you a fuller context, I suggest that before that, read his short but very insightful entry on “Wise Crowds” in the “Customer Intelligence” blog of Corante.

Living in a rich web of ongoing conversations about such phenomena as “community intelligence,” “swarm intelligence,” “smart mobs” and “tipping points,” I see tremendous differences among those concepts. They all refer to quite different aspects of the Emerging Planetary Reality. (Just google them, and you’ll see what I mean.) Yet, through the lens of market intelligence, they all have a common essence: they can contribute to the correct prediction of demand. Looking through that lens, I can see Britton’s point when he writes:
“Surwiecki suggests problem solving approaches that leverage collective intelligence may turn out to be the best way to determine whether demand truly exists for new products and services.”
Reading that, I wouldn’t be surprised if “collaborative commerce” would lead to the emergence of an “anticipatory commerce” driven by the customers’ collective intelligence about their collective aspirations. Wouldn’t that market be hugely different from today’s market driven by the profit-hunger of the producers?
The power of the unspoken and unanticipated knowledge of customers
That future is present already. It is here in what Britton calls “innovations that draw on the unspoken and unanticipated knowledge of today’s (and tomorrow’s) customers.” The story of some of the most successful “new economy” companies—E-bay, Amazon, and Google—is built on such innovations. Of course, community intelligence is much more than just market intelligence. It is the capacity of human groups—at any scale—to evolve towards higher order complexity and integration through collaboration and innovation.
How can we reconcile these two quiet different perspectives on community intelligence? I found a very illuminating answer in Tom Atlee’s reflections that you can read if you click on the “Comments” link, right below my entry on “The Wisdom of Crowds” and the colors of collective intelligence.
It’s a long comment that deserves your full attention, so read it when you can give it to it. Below, I quote two paragraphs which are particularly nutritious food for thought:
“I’m personally fascinated by the seemingly blind collective intelligence power of mass self-organization-through-self-interest (as contrasted with “collaborative dialogue towards wisdom for the common good” which is the primary factor in my theories). Although my own theories do not adequately address market-type collective intelligence, I think that the self-organizing power of markets is fairly obvious and potentially very useful….
The trick with markets (as with other social systems) is to design them so that individual actors acting in their own self-interest NATURALLY act in the interests of the whole, as well — or at least their collective actions add up to benign/beneficial outcomes for the whole. The fault with current markets is with their design. The current design alienates, fragments, and destroys. But that is not the fault of market operations, per se, even though they are based on self-interest. It is the fault of the particular market designs we use.”
Can self-interest-based markets be designed to serve higher-order collective intelligence?
Juxtaposing Britton’s and Tom’s thoughts on one another, and seeing into them through Spiral Dynamics lenses, will lead to the discovery of surprising possibilities. In fact, Tom points to one:
“I believe that self-interest-based markets can be designed to serve higher-order collective intelligence.”
“Since systems manifest emergent phenomena over and above the phenomena associated with their individual parts (e.g., water has wetness not characteristic of its component oxygen and hydrogen atoms separately) I think it is possible to have social systems (such as markets) operating at a different level than their individual components. To use SD language, a Yellow market can arrange things so that Orange individual and corporate behaviors add up to Yellow outcomes. ”
(“SD language” refers toSpiral Dynamics .There’s also a just-released, inspiring DVD with Don Beck and Andrew Cohen, in which Dr. Beck presents SD in more depth.)
Tom, let me check my understanding of what you say, with an example. So, under certain circumstances, the Orange individual and corporate behaviors driven by the motivation of individual and corporate gains can add up to a market with such Yellow qualities as:

1. Reducing waste of all sorts, including the waste of human intelligence, talents, and creative aspirations.
2. A concern for positive results on the long run rather than only in the life span of the current generation.
3. A capacity for creating abundance. I use the term “abundance” in the SD sense:
“In creating this abundance YELLOW looks for ways to range of options, available niches, maneuvering space, and expanded opportunities for each of the vMEMES. This maybe essential if each of the systems is to be expressed in their healthy rather than destructive form. By ‘abundance’ we do not mean the materialistic splendor or conspicuous consumption defined through the ORANGE worldview. Rather we refer to the increase and subsequent distribution of whatever it takes for people ‘to have enough’ of what is needed at the various levels of human existence.” (page 283-284 in Spiral Dynamics: mastering values, leadership, and change)