Synthesis from Tom Atlee's work on the forms of collective intelligence

REFLECTIVE (dialogic) CI - People think together, using dialogue and deliberation. They find and share information, critique logic and assumptions, explore implications, create solutions and mental models together. Their diversity, used well, helps them overcome blind spots, ignorance, and stuckness. They see a bigger, more complete picture with more complexity and nuance, and develop better outcomes than they could alone.
STRUCTURAL (systemic) CI - Social systems are built that support intelligent behaviors on the part of the system as a whole and/or all its members. For example, the Bill of Rights supports creativity, free flow of information, and maintenance of diversity -- all of which support collective intelligence. Chairs placed in circles support equity and sharing in ways impeded by chairs placed in rows.
EVOLUTIONARY (learning-based) CI - Organisms, species, ecosystems, and cultures are made of patterns of relationship that have "worked" over long periods. These co-evolved, built-in success-patterns contain embedded wisdom often used automatically, but which are also available for analysis and deeper learning. We can look at them as manifestations of learning -- or perhaps of "evolving coherence." Evolving coherence is perhaps most consciously pursued in the careful, grounded, ongoing collective inquiries of science, but we can also find it in any shared learning effort, an endeavor institutionalized in academia.
INFORMATIONAL (communication-based) CI - The flow of information through communication channels and the widespread gathering and persistent availability of information in databases (including libraries, newspapers, etc., as well as the Web) means that knowledge that is created or recorded in one place and time is available to others in other places and times. Universal access to information informs the activities of diverse, dispersed people beyond their individual data-gathering capacities. In society, this form of collective intelligence has been aided in the last century by telecommunications and computer technologies, as it was centuries ago by the invention of printing.
NOETIC (spiritual or consciousness-based) CI - Certain realms of human experience and cosmic reality are accessible primarily through altered/higher states of consciousness or esoteric practices. Psychic phenomena, the Akashic Record, the collective unconscious, group consciousness, the Maharishi effect, the Universal Mind, the Authentic Self, etc., all involve noetic realities with collective dimensions which offer insight, guidance, energy or power to those who can tap them. All these phenomena are grounded in "consciousness," so we need to remember that "intelligence" is the capacity to learn new things and solve challenging problems. So the term "collective intelligence" may be most appropriately applied to the noetic mode when these higher/deeper realms are accessed by a group together such that the group's subsequent understanding and activity are demonstrably intelligent.
FLOW (mutual attunement-based) CI - When the boundaries between individuals vanish, become permeable, or fade into relationship or shared enterprise, a collective can think, feel, respond and act as one entity. This "group magic" is exemplified by -- and experienced in -- intense dialogue groups, high-functioning human teams and non-human collectives like flocks of birds. Basic forms of flow or flocking behavior are achieved by individuals following simple rules about their relationship to those around them, setting aside independence in the realms covered by the rules. More complex, creative forms of flow occur when conscious, distinct individuals are so attuned to each other that they can innovate and express their uniqueness in thoroughly appropriate/embedded ways, as with jazz improvisation. Flow can be understood as dissolving the boundaries, barriers and embattledness of individualism (ego) in order to better tap the powerful essence of individuality (true uniqueness and individual capacity) in the context of collective activity.
STATISTICAL (crowd-oriented) CI - In the presence of a goal, intention, inquiry or direction -- and no skewing factors (e.g., deceit) -- a high enough number of individuals will generate a remarkable level of collective problem-solving or predictive power, even in the absence of communication among them. This has been demonstrated in many cases of mass guessing, where the average guessed solution has proven superior to over 90% of the individual guesses. This can also be seen in ants whose almost random foraging is capable of rapidly finding food that can then be collectively accessed in very focused ways.
RELEVATIONAL (emergence-based) CI - "Relevation" is a term coined by quantum physicist and dialogue innovator David Bohm. It names the dynamic through which phenomena emerge (elevate) from potentiality (Bohm's "implicate order") into actuality (Bohm's "explicate order") by reason of their relevance to existing reality. Our inquiries and intentions can attract insights and solutions, often seemingly "out of nowhere." As a form of collective intelligence this may be most vividly displayed by one person saying something and another person mis-hearing it in a way that provides them with some answer or insight. The answer, which was never spoken, relevated out of the space between them, drawn into existence by the second person's desire to know that answer.