My issue is that, depending on what you mean by “actionable knowledge” and “bottom line,” this is either impossible or what already happens. I’m only interested in realistic theories.
The actionable knowledge a corporation possesses is all the actionable knowledge possessed by all of its members. It may not aggregate that knowledge very well for decision-making purposes, but generally the limitation it faces are human limitations (generally on time and memory). When workarounds are adopted, it’s not “bring a smarter person on board” but organizational tricks to lessen the knowledge cost involved. Several retail outlets decide what products to stock by polling their employees (who are strongly representative of their customer base), and I believe a few even have it set up as a prediction market, which is an organizational trick that replaced having a clever person do research and tell them what their customer base wants.
The alternative is you mean “if I gave the CEO’s reports to someone cleverer, that cleverer person would make a better decision.” Possibly, but anyone you have in mind would probably be able to get the CEO job normally.
By bottom line you can either mean corporate profit, or total social benefit- if it’s the first, corporations are at least as good as individuals as doing that (often better, because it’s easier to insulate decision-makers from the emotional consequences of their actions), and if it’s the second, we again run into the knowledge cost problem. How can a single person hold in their head all the information necessary to determine the total social impact of an action?
My issue is that, depending on what you mean by “actionable knowledge” and “bottom line,” this is either impossible or what already happens. I’m only interested in realistic theories.
The actionable knowledge a corporation possesses is all the actionable knowledge possessed by all of its members. It may not aggregate that knowledge very well for decision-making purposes, but generally the limitation it faces are human limitations (generally on time and memory). When workarounds are adopted, it’s not “bring a smarter person on board” but organizational tricks to lessen the knowledge cost involved. Several retail outlets decide what products to stock by polling their employees (who are strongly representative of their customer base), and I believe a few even have it set up as a prediction market, which is an organizational trick that replaced having a clever person do research and tell them what their customer base wants.
The alternative is you mean “if I gave the CEO’s reports to someone cleverer, that cleverer person would make a better decision.” Possibly, but anyone you have in mind would probably be able to get the CEO job normally.
By bottom line you can either mean corporate profit, or total social benefit- if it’s the first, corporations are at least as good as individuals as doing that (often better, because it’s easier to insulate decision-makers from the emotional consequences of their actions), and if it’s the second, we again run into the knowledge cost problem. How can a single person hold in their head all the information necessary to determine the total social impact of an action?