Editor’s blog: On the trend of crowdsourcing, Editor-in-chief Eric Knorr adds explains that, “Mob wisdom goes further than closing the gap between producer and consumer. It turns the consumer into a stakeholder in the endeavor, be it a new product, a wiki book, a feature article, or — who knows? — the solution to global warming,” Editor-in-chief Eric Knorr explains. “The more you participate, the more you get back. In case you haven’t guessed, that’s an invitation to InfoWorld readers, too.” From the feature well: That said, tapping into collaborators for product development is not exactly a new idea. “What is revolutionary about this Web-era twist on traditional BI tools such as focus groups and customer surveys is the breadth and depth of intelligence that can be gathered, the ease with which such projects can be undertaken, and the scale of returns that can be achieved with little upfront investment,” Lena West writes in Mob wisdom means business. Still, it’s not for the faint of heart, West writes, adding that even for those willing, it’s still an uphill battle. “But if you think crowdsourcing is alive only among the hip, latte-drinking, highly funded Web 2.0 startup crowd, think again.” Dell, Eli Lilly, Proctor & Gamble, Google, and Best Buy are among the practitioners. “For many organizations, there is just too much untapped knowledge within the company walls to forgo giving crowdsourcing at least an in-house chance.” Careers: Shifting gears here, Bob Lewis responds to a reader who disagrees with him about achieving exceptional performance by repeating the results of others, rather than having them repeat yours. “My point was simple: If you want to encourage the broader use of anyone’s success, you have to make it clear that making use of someone else’s ideas is the engine that makes this happen much more than creating re-usable something-or-others,” Lewis explains in Why re-using is harder than building for re-use. “When you re-use the work of others, you’re forced to accept a different view of the world than your own. That can be a whole lot harder than turning the view you have into software and swim-lane diagrams.” Software Development