Software taps the frontlines for corporate decisions

An unnamed pharmaceutical company has found that a panel of scientists and doctors using Crowdcast software predicted regulatory decisions and new drug sales more accurately than the company did 86 percent of the time. The Internet-based software intends to take the so-called wisdom of crowds and apply it to business decision-making. A chief application is tapping front-line employees to determine when a product will launch, on the theory that their "unfiltered" responses will yield a more accurate prediction than one based on data that has been filtered and massaged as it made its way to the boss. Those answering corporate queries posed via Crowdcast offer a response and make a virtual bet on their prediction, allowing the system to self-select the best predictors. Article [1]