A Different Take on Design Thinking Strategy

Crowdsourcing. Wikipedia (a sort of product of crowdsourcing), defines the term as "the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call." The term is used to describe a trend of leveraging the creativeness/innovation of the collaborative masses. Its a process used by Institute for Human Centered Design to attract social innovators through competition. But there are those like Dan Woods of Forbes.com, who don't hold much faith in the collective intelligence of the crowd. In his article "The Myth of Crowdsourcing," Woods agrues "there is no crowd in crowdsourcing. There are only virtuosos, usually uniquely talented... from their fervent brains spring new ideas... the crowd solves nothing, creates nothing." There may be some merit to his ranting, for he later assersts his frustration with the trendy phrase is that the "misplaced faith in the crowd is a blow the the image of the heroic inventor. We need to nurture and fund inventors and give them time to explore, play and fail. A false idea of the crowd reduces the motivation for this investment, with the supposition that companies can tap the minds of inventors on the cheap." In the end Woods hits a criticial node with me. In the world of Social Innovation it's true that 1 plus 1 is greater than 2, as professed by Tim Zak of ISI, but what is the net gain of the 'crowd' versus the 'virtuoso'?