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Showing posts from May, 2012

Crowdsourcing for Dukes

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Care for some management speak, your Grace? Let's start with an anecdote. The night before the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington was asked a question by one of his junior officers. " What are your plans, your grace? " the officer asked. “ To beat the French ” was the Duke's curt reply. When the questioner went on to suggest that the Duke might be well advised to share his more detailed plans with his men in case he himself were to be injured the Duke tersely replied, “ If I thought my hair knew what my brain was thinking I’d shave it orf and wear a wig ”. How times change. This morning, an e-mail newsletter arrived in my inbox from the McKinsey Quarterly  . It contained the sort of thinking that would have the dear old Duke of Wellington ripping out his hair and which would have curled his toes inside his now famous boots. The McKinsey article talks about “Crowdsourcing”. According to wikipedia crowdsourcing is about "outsourcing tasks to