One of the big promises of the Wisdom of the Crowd vision is that Collective Knowledge is almost always superior than Individual Expertise.

This Collaborative Forecasting model has worked well in the Financial Industry. One example is Marketocracy , where more than 65000 analysts compete to be part of the elite group of top 100 investors in order to build the m100 index. The performance of this index has beaten the S&P 500 index for more than 2 years.

Now, take the case of the project of the World Economic Forum "Global Risks Prediction Market" . The system invites professionals to share their opinion about important topics like: Future Oil Prices, Environment issues, Geopolitics problems, etc.

Let`s review the results:

Until now, after 2 months of its launching, there are very few participants.

How come ? These are really important topics !!!

In my opinion, the answer is very clear:

Take the Marketocracy case. They give investors a monetary incentive to be part of the game.

so,

I agree with the Wisdom of the Crowds followers that there are more incentives besides money, but until they manage to get people really involved and willing to share their knowledge, the Prediction Market business will be eagerly waiting for Prime Time.