When Not to Use the Crowd: Caveat Emptor Evaluatus

You can already tell I am a huge fan of the profit potential that can come from mirroring the collective consciousness. Maybe it comes from my father, Chuck Shafer, who once said, “It's always easier to ride a horse in the direction it's going.” But there is a vast difference between observing the crowds (and leveraging their already determined direction) and asking them to help solve your problems for you. Do you trust everything they say? What if their advice is wrong? They can walk away and stop for an ice cream cone, while you have to stay behind and manage the consequences.

If you decide to engage the crowd for innovation (and I clearly think you should), you will still have to exercise careful discernment before blindly trusting their judgment. When you give the crowd an opportunity to brainstorm ideas for what you do, the vast majority of their suggestions will land in the arena of “cool yet impractical.” Take note that 200,000 ideas flowed through MyStarbucksIdea.com before the splash stick . . . well, uh . . . stuck with the company. And realize that Boeing enlisted 100 engineers for the 787 Dreamliner: 100 top engineers who cross-checked each other's work (and who all had to agree) before a significant design change could take hold. Imagine the safety consequences if Boeing had lurched ahead on every cool idea. Would you want to fly on a plane that was built in this way?

In the same vein, Threadless doesn't print every design it receives online. Of the thousands submitted, approximately 10 per week are actually printed. Despite its intense reliance on the crowd's involvement, Threadless still has a brand management team that must carefully decide which designs are fit to print—and which will meet the standards their loyal customers expect.