彭蒙惠英语：Working Smarter Together（在线收听）

Working Smarter Together

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Taking advantage of what’s there

How can firms tap into the collective wisdom? One intriguing method of doing this is to set up internal decision markets, which firms can use to produce forecasts of the future and evaluations of potential corporate strategies. Few companies have tried such markets. But the few examples suggest they could be very useful. In the late 1990s, for instance, Hewlett-Packard experimented with artificial markets to forecast sales. Only 20 to 30 percent of employees participated, and each market ran for just a week, with people trading at lunch and in the evening. Similar to the way securities, stocks or commodities are traded in other markets, employees were given “shares” to trade, buy or sell according to their opinion about sales projections. The internal market’s results outperformed the company 75 percent of the time. Even more impressive was a recent experiment at e. Lilly, a division of Eli Lilly, which set up a market to test whether it was possible to distinguish between drug candidates likely to be approved by the FDA and those likely to be rejected. Realistic profiles and experimental data for six hypothetical drugs were devised by e. Lilly, three of which it knew would be approved and three rejected. When trading opened, the market—made up of a diverse mix of employees— quickly identified the winners.

The evidence is clear: Groups— whether top executives evaluating a potential acquisition, or sales reps and engineers analyzing a new product—will consistently make better decisions than an individual. Companies have spent too long coddling the special few. It’s time for them to start figuring out how they’re going to tap the wisdom of the many.

Vocabulary Focus

tap into (v phr) to obtain or make advantageous use of something

candidate (n) [5kAndidit] a person or thing considered likely to receive or experience something

hypothetical (adj) [7haipEu5WetikEl] imagined or suggested but not necessarily real or true