Maximize the Wisdom of the Crowd for Complex Problems

Crowdsourcing can drive innovation, but its success depends on participant guidance and problem complexity. For simple problems, idea-sharing guidance, which encourages people to share and build on one another’s ideas, works best. Complex problems benefit more from integrative solutions generation — prompting people to share detailed knowledge and combine insights to create comprehensive solutions. Research shows that applying this approach to crowdsourcing yields innovative, practical results.