From the Welcome:

This book is intended for people who seek more effective and satisfying ways of working with others. It is for people who are working to make their communities, neighborhoods, and organizations more inclusive, effective, and wise. Everyone who participates in groups has something important to contribute and something further to learn. As authors, we bring to bear our learning from decades of convening groups and participating in large-scale change efforts in business, health care, education, mental health, criminal justice, conflict resolution, and global initiatives. Ten years ago, we founded and have since shepherded the Collective Wisdom Initiative, an informal network of practitioners and scholars from around the world who are bringing together a body of research, theory, and practice into a field of study that we have come to call collective wisdom.

Collective wisdom refers to knowledge and insight gained through group and community interaction. At a deeper level, however, it is about our living connection to each other and the interdependence we share in our neighborhoods, organizations, and world community. Supported by the Fetzer Institute, a private operating foundation in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Collective Wisdom Initiative shares with Fetzer a common conviction: that efforts to address the world’s critical issues must go beyond political, social, and economic strategies to their psychological, spiritual, and cultural roots. Behind our shared conviction lies a belief that human survival depends upon our recognizing that we have a stake in each other’s well-being, and that groups have potential for being sources of extraordinary creative power, incubators of innovative ideas, and vehicles for social healing.

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