Gamers pieced together an AIDS-like virus puzzle that has baffled scientists for more than a decade by playing Foldit.
As I drove to work recently, I heard a very uplifting story on the news. It seems that researchers at the University of Washington built a game that allowed participants to unfold a complex enzyme structure that could lead to scientific breakthroughs in retroviral drug design.
Researchers had been toiling for years using super computers to attempt to unlock the secrets of this enzyme but had no joy. They decided to put the game out to the online gaming community, and within 10 days , the gamers had solved the riddle by playing the online game, Foldit. On the surface, this is nothing short of amazing. But if we dig deeper there is a method to the madness.
A good friend once remarked that there is much more wisdom in the crowd than the leaders in most assemblies or events. If they only asked. He’s right you know. How many times have you heard a speech that provoked the question, “Have you considered this point as well?” Maybe if the person had, they would have changed the speech a bit. It’s impossible for one person to consider all angles, and that’s where the crowd acts as a force multiplier.
So how does this apply to mobility you might ask? It’s simple really. If you have a crowd of mobile workers and can solicit their feedback, you will gain an immense amount of knowledge about what you are doing right, wrong or not doing at all. The crowd rules in this case. They have the accumulated knowledge and experience and you can shamelessly steal all of that to make your mobility project successful.
In case you’re thinking this sounds remarkably similar to my many other blog posts, you are correct. This is nothing new and you should have stopped reading as soon as you realized it but you didn’t. Why? Because you were looking for some wisdom that you could obtain from a member of the crowd. You were just doing it one person at a time. That process isn’t as efficient, but I won’t tell anybody.
So the next time somebody tells you that a bunch of online gamers, living in their parents’ basements, eating pizza and drinking Jolt cola will never amount to much of anything, you will recall this post. The next thing you should do is inform that person that they are not quite on the money and enlighten them with your knowledge of group-think. Then ask them how they could apply this new-found knowledge in their world.
Tags: Brian Philbin, Business Mobility, Business Process, Mobile Futures Today, Mobility - General
