On 16 December 2018, Émile Servan-Schreiber shared the podcast of his appearance the previous day on Egosystème, a programme of Swiss broadcaster RTS. RTS’s episode page confirms L’intelligence collective on 15 December, on La 1ère. In our translation: Collective intelligence. It associates the conversation with his book Supercollectif: La nouvelle puissance de nos intelligences, published by Fayard.
The group’s ability is a separate question
RTS’s episode description centres on a distinction between the abilities of individuals and those of a group. It presents diversity and emotional intelligence as ingredients in collective performance, then emphasises listening and considering different perspectives. These are the broadcaster’s summary of the episode’s themes, rather than a complete transcript of Servan-Schreiber’s answers.
The description also connects digital networks with organising a larger collective. It places the argument in politics, economics, prediction and innovation: how can people thinking together produce an answer that an isolated expert would not? RTS presents groups outperforming experts as a general theme of the interview. The useful question for a listener is which conditions let different pieces of information contribute to that shared answer.
What the original research supports
A narrower research finding helps interpret that claim. The 2010 study by Anita Woolley and colleagues reported a group-performance factor correlated with members’ social sensitivity, more equal conversational turn-taking and the proportion of women in the group. Those correlations support asking how a group works together; they do not establish a universal recipe for accuracy.
That distinction matters for forecasting. A listener can take the interview’s theme as a reason to examine participation and communication, while requiring separate evidence about whether a combined forecast performs well. A forecast must still specify an outcome, record a dated estimate and be checked after resolution.
The official episode description supplies the themes discussed here. For a concrete example of collective forecasting tested against outcomes, our Johns Hopkins study review follows the evidence beyond the general case for thinking together. The radio appearance brought the organisational argument to a broader audience: connecting minds creates an opportunity, while the quality of their exchanges determines how that opportunity is used.
