WeAreSmarter.org - Businesses and Communities

If "There's no 'I' in 'team'" is your work motto, you probably believe that collaboration produces better and faster results than individual laboring. The We Are Smarter team, a collection of over a million students, faculty and alumni of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as leaders, authors, and experts from the fields of management and technology, set out to prove this theory. The team created a wiki-based community (wearesmarter.org) that aimed to discover whether or not online communities work in respect to marketing and business development. From this community stemmed the idea to publish a book, We Are Smarter Than Me. The book (scheduled to be published on October 23rd), is composed entirely of submissions form the We Are Smarter community and sets out to demonstrate how businesses can benefit from the "wisdom of the crowds". If you think this sounds like a great idea, you can sign up to contribute to the next book, which will deal specifically with sales and marketing. There are many other ways to get involved as well.

"In a time where community and social networks are starting to infiltrate every aspect of our personal and professional lives, WE decided to test the notion that a book of business best practices could be written by "the crowd," and we are excited to have participated in this groundbreaking experiment".

The We Are Smarter project certainly backs up its publication with credentials; the team boasts among its members several experts in the fields of management and technology. As opposed to previous releases on the subject, The We Are Smarter book discusses the benefits of community wisdom and doesn't limit itself to simply proving that the online network phenomenon exists. This book could be a powerful tool for businesses who want to capitalize upon the growing popularity of social networks and communities and discover how these phenomena can improve the business itself.

What is the screening process like for potential contributors? It's great that this book seeks to demonstrate the power of community in a business, but to be fair the We Are Smarter team probably IS smarter than the average intra-business networks. That said, can a handpicked team of extremely well-educated contributors really prove that all business communities will produce such quality results?