James Surowicki turned common sense and folk wisdom — collective intelligence, really — into a cutting-edge idea with his book The Wisdom of Crowds.

Open source programming is perhaps the most powerful example of the idea's practical application. Wikipedia extended the approach to organizing facts, and Web sites like Digg, Reddit, and others did the same to find what's worth reading on the internet.

Now someone is trying to harness the phenomenon for solving all sorts of problems, and it will make its formal debut at the TED conference in Monterey, California, next week.

Kluster.com, a startup in Burlington, Vermont, will unveil a site — now in beta — that encourages people to submit their problems, then encourages members of its community to offer up solutions.

Each idea is discussed, refined, resubmitted, and reassessed. In the end, solutions are rated and ranked, with credit allocated accordingly. At some point, the founders promise, Kluster credits will be convertible to cash.

Stay tuned for more.

by Mark Stein