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Abstract: The recent successes of systems like Google, Wikipedia or Inn°Centive suggest that individuals and groups can more effectively create valuable intellectual products by acting on the basis of a collective intelligence (CI) (Malone et al, 2012). The subject of our research paper is online community projects which include collective decision making tools and innovation mechanisms allowing and encouraging individual and team creativity, entrepreneurship, online collaboration, new forms of self-regulation and self-governance by considering these projects as being catalyst for emergence of CI. Our quantitative research explored the extent and major trends of the engagement and participation of Lithuanian society in online community projects and have proved the necessity to search for tools fostering civic engagement and collective decision making. The objective of our research project is the intention to propose managerial, social and legal measures for the stimulation of the process. The first step by implementing this ambitious task is to define a set of criteria for measuring Collective intelligence in networked platforms. In this paper we are introducing the theoretical model for CI Potential Index for a scientific discussion. The methodology will allow to identify and analyze conditions that lead online communities to become more collective intelligent: inclusive, reflective and safe. The CI Potential Index will show the state and dynamics of the CI according to changes of various internal and external parameters. The data necessary for the identification of the CI Potential Index dimensions were collected during the quantitative and qualitative research and will be revised during the scientific experiment. A longitudinal observation of a number of networked platforms will be undertaken to measure agreed representative parameters.
Keywords: collective intelligence, decision making, online communities
1. Introduction
Scientific society argues that in general human groups demonstrate higher capabilities of information-processing and problem solving than an individual (Heylighen, 1999; Luo et al., 2009). The term "wisdom of crowds' was coined by Surowiecki (2005) and it describes a phenomenon where, "under certain conditions, large groups can achieve better results than any single individual in the group". Surowiecki (2005) made an extensive research on collective judgment and intuition of crowd. Based on empirical investigation author argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in...