Collective intelligence is what it sounds like—a group, usually large, of people working together, collecting information in various ways and sharing that information electronically. This method is being fine tuned by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Collective Intelligence which shows CI to be effective.

However, first-hand experience for many has shown this type of information-synergy to be true even before researchers decided to put specific numbers to it.

Many companies are busy attempting to collect the accumulated information of some of their most-experienced employees. The FDIC, for example, has a lot of expertise in their regulators from the 1980s farm crisis; that information has been useful for regulating and making decisions regarding banks during the last two years who were showing economic weaknesses. And that information will soon be lost when those examiners retire.

While some companies are gathering this information by interviews and recording them, others are creating collaborations through things like wikis. Others are using in-house versions of micro-blogging systems (similar to Twitter) to quickly ask questions of one another and get immediate responses. Imagine the value of this type of just-in-time information at a call center with a particularly prickly customer who is on the phone!

While I love gadgets and own many, not all of them are useful. But some "fun” ones also have a lot of workplace value. However, like many lessons in life, they only have value when you use them!