Collective intelligence is the ability of a group of people to pool their collective knowledge, ideas, and perspectives in order to create a more comprehensive, richer understanding of an issue. This form of intelligence is greater than the sum of its parts, as groups can create unique synergies, leveraging each other's thoughts and knowledge to arrive at solutions that no single individual would have been able to come up with. This phenomenon can be further enhanced when individuals within the group have diverse expertise, which allows for the possibilities of multiple angles being explored and deeper levels of insight being attained.

See also: emergence, evolutionary computing, game theory, self-organization