Wisdom of (non-human) crowds

What can social networking and new media folks learn from bees, ants, cockroaches, and fish? Quite a lot, it seems. Tom Seeley, a behavioral biologist from Cornell University, gives us a fascinating view in his latest research, summarized in Swarm Saavy, a May 9th, 2009 article for ScienceNews by Susan Milius.

Honeybee scouts have distinct processes for choosing new nesting sites, recruiting other scouts to confirm promising opportunities. Bee scouts work independently, report freely, and argue their points with each other before coming to a quorum. Balancing interdependence and independence leads to the best solutions. Too much independence, and they take too long reaching consensus. Too much interdependence, on the other hand, leads to copying behaviors and poor choices. But the group decision isn't entirely left to the scouts to decide. Our elite researchers motivate the swarm to make a site visit, where they continue to advocate for their choice. Consider the human parallels in the technology adoption world: venture capitalists are the scouts, promising new technologies are the nesting sites, and potential customers are the swarm to be motivated to change from their old site/technology to something new.

Seeley's research and others on group decision making have been collected in the March 27, 2009 special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.