[jengleton]

In the video linked above, Robert Miles models organizational idea-generation as something like "everyone thinks of their best idea, and then we just pick the best from that set". That's definitely a simplification. I do think there's some notion of "synergy", where people working together can hammer an idea into shape more effectively than either could alone.

However, I suspect that there's also a counter-force, a "diminishing returns" effect: as more people get involved in an organization, coordination becomes more difficult, communication becomes more expensive. If this converges to some limit, then that's the smartest a human organization can be.

Maybe better methods of organizing knowledge could help raise that limit, or more effective modes of communication, but my suspicion is that the upper bound for "organizational decision making capability" is within one or two orders of magnitude of a single person, not vastly more. No idea how we'd actually quantify that, of course!