Should business schools take a lesson from the myth of crowdsourcing?

This may sound ridiculous that I am a second year business student and have not heard of crowdsourcing until I read the articles posted for this weeks class. I am writing this as I am embarrassed to admit it--well maybe I knew what crowdsourcing was, I just did not know they gave it the term "crowdsourcing" if that makes sense.

This posting is going to refer to the forbes article, "The Myth of Crowdsourcing". I have to agree with the author of the article. For some odd reason we like to think that "teams" or as the article says "crowds" are better than individuals--I guess the whole elementary saying, "two heads are better than one". We have this idea embedded into our heads--especially today, that any great idea has been thought up by a team.

I understand that a lot of business today, with whatever industry you go into you are usually placed in a team--a marketing team, a consulting team, etc etc, but I would like to say that I think teams are usually 4 or 5 individuals who think individually, but just call themselves a team.

Many of you people may disagree--but I got my fair share of teamwork after the first year of business school. I found that it was not the team that came up with ideas or worked productively, but more so each individual did their own thing and then at the end we combined all the work and turned it in--like it was done as a team. I am sure everyone can say at some point in their life that they have been on an terrible team--whether professionally, academically, or in sports.

I found this article interesting because with something like wikipedia, people have this idea that an entire "crowd" is constantly checking for incorrect facts on the website and this isn't the case as stated in the article. Usually it is individuals that are driven by some force that makes them do something--like correct a wikipedia page.

So this leaves me to think when did this idea that crowds or teams are better/more productive than individuals? When you hire an MBA student for a job after school, you are not hiring the entire team they worked with for econ, strategy or accounting...so why the necessity of teamwork all the time? Shouldn't we be focusing on make the individual the "ultimate working machine"? Don't get me wrong, some teams are fantastic and produce great work, but I feel lately, like the article, the focus has moved from the individual to the crowd, when really it is still the individual who is doing all of the innovation.

thats enough rant and raving for now---and since a lot of my teammates are in this class and going to be reading this blog--you know I love all of you and if it wasnt for you, I wouldnt have made it through the first year :-)