My current favorite book, The Wisdom of Crowds, makes a very convincing argument that crowds are always better than even the smartest individuals when it comes to making decisions. However, crowds need a diversity of opinions to choose from in order to make the right decision and avoid group-think which almost always leads to the wrong decision.
That’s why a recent idea from Chris Crosby, my longtime business partner, caught my eye. His idea is to post 60 brief ideas in 60 days, and it stems from a roundtable he recently participated in with Paul Stockford (from Saddletree Research) which consisted of 60 ideas in 60 minutes. Each roundtable participant was given one minute at a time to present an idea before moving on to the next person. It was a big success, so Chris decided to translate that idea to his blog.
The basic concept is to post one brief idea, suggestion, or thought each day for 60 days. That’s a pretty prolific blogging output (if you want to say something of substance at least) and since I’m always game for a challenge I’ve decided to join Chris. My typical blogging output has been closer to one or two posts per week so it’s going to force me to stretch a little, which is almost always a good thing. So starting today and ending on December 31st I’ll be posting one idea a day.
Along with the blog series, we’re launching an experimental new site called 60Ideas.com which is a Digg clone that we’re using to aggregate and rank the ideas. It’s open to other people as well, but 
what we’re going to do is post the ideas that each of us come up with to the site and let people vote the best ideas up to the top. The hope is that a more tightly focused social voting site will help the cream rise to the top while at the same time making for an interesting experiment in social brainstorming.
So check out the site and let us know which ideas you think are the best, and here’s hoping you enjoy it! Maybe we’ll even make some good decisions along the way.
