Friday, April 27, 2007

BrainJuicer - Predictive Markets for new concepts

Predictive Markets- Is the Crowd Consistently Wise?

As posted on the BrainJuicer's website.

The theory behind the analytical BrainJuicers® (Mind Reader and Best/Worst) comes from cognitive psychology and is based on the power of associations.

Modern psychology makes much of insights into the associative structure of human memory and the distributed understanding of meaning, using associative techniques to identify how an idea is positioned in the mind in order to unpack its subjective meaning. How an idea is positioned in the associative networks of memory may be seen as describing the meaning of that idea for its holder. This is why the simple association game that Psychologists play with patients is an incredibly insightful way of revealing what people think and feel about a subject.

The theory behind the creative BrainJuicer® (BrainStormer) is recent work done on 'Electronic Brainstorming'. Rather than a brainstorm taking place aloud with a team in a single location, the BrainStormer asks people to contribute their ideas individually and remotely. Empirical findings reflect the success of this approach, both absolutely and relative to 'regular' brainstorming. The size of the group means you tap a wider pool of conceptual capital and generate more ideas.