Optimization

I read a discover article recently where the general public was polled concerning current problems in astrophysics.  The average of thier answers tended towards being surprisingly accurate to the thinking of the top scientists.  This begs the quesiton of what the most efficient way of arriving at solutions is.  Does it take widening the pool of responses, or delegating the problem to a refined set? Also, how does this affect us culturally?

One thing i would be interested in this course is to try to derive THE BEST WAY OF DESIGN THINKING,or a design process because it seems to be an underlying question.

Another question is, how does this quest coincide with Neuro Linguistic programming? Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

Cheryl