Pitney Bowes draws on employees' collective intelligence

Rather than bringing managers into a conference room to find solutions to 42 separate problems since 2008, Pitney Bowes used collective intelligence software to put the challenges out to 10,000 of its employees to draw on their resources, reports BusinessWeek's Rachael King. 

More companies, including WalMart, MetLife and AT&T, are using collective intelligence tools to tap into the ideas of the workforce, King reports. The goal is to improve customer service while simultaneously reducing costs. The market for these kinds of tools is rising between 15 percent and 30 percent annually, with organizations spending $250 million a year, King reports.

To make collective intelligence initiatives successful, however, employees have to be motivated to participate and managers have to be willing to support it. To lure the workforce into the challenge, Pitney Bowes developed a contest called "Innovation Idol." In the end, employees who came up with the six best ideas were brought up on a stage to present them to the senior managers.

For more:
- see Rachael King's article at BusinessWeek

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