Through study of the employees or citizens, and the relationships between them, we can harness the power of the crowd to drive impactful change

The essence of crowd science, a burgeoning and ubiquitous discipline stemming from traditional data science, is to draw relationships about underlying truths from crowdsourced data to find connections that may have otherwise not been seen. Psychology and sociology now come into play because individuals in the crowd interact and influence each other, creating new and often-changing truths.

Through study of the employees or citizens, and the relationships between them, we can harness the power of the crowd to innovate and drive impactful change on a large scale. However, there are concepts of crowd science that can be utilised on a more personal level as well; the art and application can be effectively used to uncover key players and understand how relationships between individuals influence greater processes and communities.

Emerging connections

Social network analysis is an example of a discipline that has been applied to several matters of international importance including the capture of Saddam Hussein. US intelligence analysts used advanced math on social networks visualised by link diagrams to uncover the key aid of Saddams, which lead to his capture. This individual was identified because he had a high 'betweeness centrality' score, meaning he was a natural connector and was found on the shortest path between many other nodes in Saddams network.

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How companies are using data science to harness the power of the crowd