Entrepreneur | Founder | Speaker | Author | Collective intelligence

Bruce Muirhead is an entrepreneur, speaker, and media commentator on designing large-scale collaborations and collective intelligence. Above all, he’s best known to the broader community for designing large-scale collaborative projects such as Mindhive, Boilerhouse, and Eidos. Above all, he is also a contributor to popularising collective intelligence globally.

Bruce Muirhead sitting with key leaders in Australia discussing collective intelligence and collaboration at a national conference.

Medium | Media | Speaking | Commentary

A black and white portrait photograph of Bruce Muirhead.

About Bruce

Bruce heads Mindhive, which is a platform that utilises collective intelligence as the future of finding answers and ideas. Before that, Bruce founded Eidos.

Bruce Muirhead speaking at the Victorian Government's innovation conference.

Speaking

Bruce Muirhead speaks at all kinds of innovation events including keynotes at conferences, workshops, off-site retreats, boardroom briefings.

Bruce Muirhead speaking on business media television show Ausbiz.

Media

Bruce is one of Australia’s most thought-provoking social and tech media commentators. He is a popular speaker on the tech innovation global circuit.

Bruce facilitating an innovation course in Amsterdam that teaches attendees how to bring crowdsourcing into their organisation.

Collaborative intelligence courses

Bruce leads a series of innovation courses that teaches you to bring crowdsourcing into your organisation. And how to build a powerful crowdsourcing project.

Bruce Muirhead with Prime Minister Julia Gillard at her speech at the School of Arts, Ann Street, Brisbane, Australia. Thought leaders gathered in crowd.

Collective intellligence blog

How do we become more insightful on the things that matter to us? In these thought pieces, Bruce shares tips and insights to help.

Innovation book

In Bruce’s book, you will learn how to use the new revolution in problem-solving and creating fresh ideas to your advantage. It’s the future of business, government and solving everyday problems. When you or your own people find the answer, it’s far more valuable.

Crowds and collaborative intelligence – ABC

Future Tense with Anthony Funnell and Bruce Muirhead.

“If we can crowdsource a bottle of wine to make it cheaper for the citizenry in Australia. Why can’t we crowdsource the intellectual capital in Australia to bring that to the problems and challenges in Australia? So the beginning of the technology was something of an ISP platform or crowdsourcing and crowdfunding type of idea.

So what we ended up building was ideas like Gumtree, which was a quick upload of a challenge, a little bit of E-harmony, and an RSVP.com idea for the search of entrepreneurs that match the challenge needs. The ability for users to search for experts on a skills-based, on an interest-based. The biggest driver for most organisations these days was limited resources in government and increasing pressure on universities and consultancy houses dealing with the fragmentation expertise. Was the demonstration of the problem solve… the impact.” 

Listen to the full episode


Futures forecasting – ABC

Antony Funnell interviewed Bruce Muirhead on ABC Radio National’s ‘Future Tense’ on 27 June 2021, speaking to Mindhive, crowdsourcing and forecasting. Listen here: Future Tense with Antony Funnell Trying to predict the future is a timeless and time-consuming pursuit. Artificial Intelligence is increasingly being enlisted to the cause, but so are “super-forecasters” – a new clique of individuals with remarkable predictive powers.

But what are their limits? What does their rise say about the still popular notion of collective intelligence? The wisdom of the crowd? Future Tense looks at the changing role of humans in forecasting.


AI & HI collective intelligence

And in a time where many enterprise businesses are searching tirelessly for the missing link between AI and growth, maybe the answer lies in the collaborative intelligence networks? The power and importance of collated group thought have passed through the rigours of constant debate and evaluation. In other words, it cannot be understated when discussing growth strategy from the point of view of an upscaling company. In the fast-paced global business environment we now find ourselves in, the term ‘grow or die’ has moved from a light-hearted sentiment to a strictly enforced mantra. Many professionals would say it is the single most excellent catalyst for their success.

But to achieve the speed of growth that many businesses now require to survive, upscaling to enterprise levels. Companies must re-evaluate how they acquire expertise. Where it comes from, and how it fits into the overall growth process. Collective intelligence is ideally situated to cater to this need, much akin to private consultancy’s role in the large-scale business landscape. Above all, the two differ in what they offer to the growth process, with consultancy aiming for strict end-goal oriented applications. At the same time, collective intelligence concerns itself with the entire process from start to finish. Bruce’s blog on collective intelligence.


The power of many

What is collective intelligence? Collective intelligence is groups of individuals collaborating in ways that seem intelligent. In a recent interview with Deloitte Insights, Malone broadened his definition.

“I think it’s probably more useful to think of collective intelligence as the property that a supermind has. Collective intelligence is something that can emerge from a group that includes people and computers. Or it could be a group of only computers, or of bees or ants or even bacteria. Collective intelligence is a very general property, and superminds can arise in many kinds of systems. Although the systems I’ve mostly talked about are those that involve people and computers.”


Tech ‘should bring collective intelligence to issues that are common to us all’

From dictionaries and religious texts to Wikipedia, YouTube, IMDB and Quora, our collective intelligence allows us to share knowledge at an unprecedented rate. While we are making full use of technology for gaining knowledge, we have also begun to bring problem-solving and crowdsourcing on tech platforms.

“When connected, collective intelligence starts to connect human intelligence and artificial intelligence, that’s where we start to see the most exciting stuff happen” Bruce Muirhead