Swarm Theory

Collective intelligence plays out in the insect and animal worlds, and is described by swarm theory. How bees make a decision on moving to a new home, how ants determine who will do what jobs on a given day, how caribou deploy to move the herd away from a predator wolf -- in all these situations there is no leader or command center, yet the actions of each individual contribute to the survival and effectiveness of the group.
It is the collection and coordination of individual data and action, and interactions through a series of simple rules that give a group its intelligence. See the article by Peter Miller in National Geographic. And there are parallels to our work with collaboration.

Miller ties swarm theory to the use of collaboration for group intelligence, noting that collective processes in which brainstorm-and-voting or prediction markets are used result in accurate election predictions and effective search strategies (Google's ranking.) The wisdom of the group is wider and faster than just a group of "experts" (when the process is set up well.) He quotes Thomas Malone of MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence: "It's now possible for huge numbers of people to think together in ways we never imagined a few decades ago," says Malone. "No single person knows everything that's needed to deal with problems we face as a society, such as health care or climate change, but collectively we know far more than we've been able to tap so far."
"A honeybee never sees the big picture any more than you or I do," says Thomas Seeley, the bee expert. "None of us knows what society as a whole needs, but we look around and say, oh, they need someone to volunteer at school, or mow the church lawn, or help in a political campaign."