Episode 6 | On Collective Intelligence | Interview with Gianni Giacomelli

In this new episode we are meeting a great new guest Gianni Giacomelli, Gianni is a fellow member of the Exponential Do community, and he is the Head of Design Innovation at the MIT Centre for Collective Intelligence, and we are going to dive with him in the fascinating field  of augmented collective intelligence.

When in this podcast we talk about Intelligence, we usually look at it as an emergent phenomenon of complex computational topologies, this is called emergentist explanation and it is the closest to complex system theory, but it is not the only possible way to explain intelligence, David Chalmers called it the Hard Problem of Consciousness, and for example if you are interested to alternative explanations you might want to look into  “idealist” approaches like the ones from Bernardo Karstrup or Donald Hoffman, I personally find Hoffman’s approach particularly interesting, also, but not only, for its similarities with Wolfram’s computational approach in his Physics Project.

As we said, though, we are going to stick to the emergentist view, which is particularly valuable for us since one of the theses of this podcast is that innovation is an emergent phenomenon that arises from complex human network topologies (within a specific organization or inter-organization of course), which creates a direct link with collective intelligence,  even if probably collective intelligence can explain much more than innovation, given its ties with sociology and social sciences.

What we are going to discover today is what happens when you augment collective intelligence, and Gianni will give us plenty of practical examples, 

Starting from a definition of augmented collective intelligence we will immediately dive into its implications in innovation, underlining how innovation at operational level is as important if not more than at technology level. We will also discuss the impact of remote working in organizations and how managing weak social network ties is the key to success.

Continuing our conversation about organizations, we will understand how looking at their complex system dynamics can help us identify the key elements to design and  transform them into super-minds.

This will lead us to discuss about the combination of artificial and human collective intelligence, and we will see some interesting examples across Merger&Acquisitions, Sales and R&D.

So what is the key to become an enabler  of augmented collective intelligence? According to Gianni, and I couldn’t agree more,  it is to be an anti-disciplinarian, working across boundaries and becoming a T-shaped individual. 

Relevant links:

• Gianni Giacomelli's website 
• MIT Centre for Collective Intelligence Website
• Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread