brain gang
n.— «A few years ago, Netflix offered a million dollars to anyone out there who could design a system to improve their system of rating DVDs by 10 percent. 17,000 submissions came in from the public. Dell Computers, once almost crippled by service policies that turned off its own customers in droves, turned itself around by embracing customers and their ideas. Several of Dell’s current models incorporate major design changes which came directly from civilians at its “IdeaStorm” website, the content of which is completely customer-driven. This kind of thing is sometimes called a “brain gang,” and it’s something more and more private companies are employing as a cost effective way of drawing on the talents of a community to solve problems.» —“Idea Storm” by Michael Miller AntonNews.com (Nassau County, New York) June 4, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...