The fad is to assume that groups are always smarter than individual people. Somehow some magic wisdom will come about if you form a mob instead of having people work as individuals.

It does work sometimes: A crowd of buyers sets a price in a marketplace. But it only works if you want output of a single result. Otherwise, you get design by committee. You get features added to services without anyone looking at the whole complex picture of what you're trying to build.

There's nothing wrong with soliciting feedback and ideas, but you can't design a complex system that way. You get appeasement to this or that concern, like the health care bill. It breaks the heart of every idealistic person to say this, but sometimes there can be too much democracy.

That's not how you create real value. CIOs and IT departments should look at the perception of their value. CEOs will say, "Why are we paying you if the crowd can do it?"