The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations [Hardcover]

James Surowiecki (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 25, 2004

“No one in this world, so far as I know, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”  —H. L. Mencken
 
H. L. Mencken was wrong.

In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

This seemingly counterintuitive notion has endless and major ramifications for how businesses operate, how knowledge is advanced, how economies are (or should be) organized and how we live our daily lives. With seemingly boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, economic behaviorism, artificial intelligence, military history and political theory to show just how this principle operates in the real world. 

Despite the sophistication of his arguments, Surowiecki presents them in a wonderfully entertaining manner. The examples he uses are all down-to-earth, surprising, and fun to ponder. Why is the line in which you’re standing always the longest? Why is it that you can buy a screw anywhere in the world and it will fit a bolt bought ten-thousand miles away? Why is network television so awful? If you had to meet someone in Paris on a specific day but had no way of contacting them, when and where would you meet? Why are there traffic jams? What’s the best way to win money on a game show? Why, when you walk into a convenience store at 2:00 A.M. to buy a quart of orange juice, is it there waiting for you? What do Hollywood mafia movies have to teach us about why corporations exist?

The Wisdom of Crowds is a brilliant but accessible biography of an idea, one with important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, conduct our business, and think about our world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we're all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest). His rubric, then, covers a range of problems, including driving in traffic, competing on TV game shows, maximizing stock market performance, voting for political candidates, navigating busy sidewalks, tracking SARS and designing Internet search engines like Google. If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge. Surowiecki's style is pleasantly informal, a tactical disguise for what might otherwise be rather dense material. He offers a great introduction to applied behavioral economics and game theory.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Surowiecki first developed his ideas for Wisdom of Crowds in his “Financial Page” column of The New Yorker. Many critics found his premise to be an interesting twist on the long held notion that Americans generally question the masses and eschew groupthink. “A socialist might draw some optimistic conclusions from all of this,” wrote The New York Times. “But Surowiecki’s framework is decidedly capitalist.” Some reviewers felt that the academic language and business speak decreased the impact of the argument. Still, it’s a thought-provoking, timely book: the TV studio audience of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire guesses correctly 91 percent of the time, compared to “experts” who guess only 65 percent correctly. Keep up the good work, comrades.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (May 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385503865
• ISBN-13: 978-0385503860
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.1 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (219 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #332,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #41 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Social Theory

More About the Author

SUROWIECKI is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes the popular business column, 'The Financial Page.' His work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Artforum, Wired, and Slate. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

403 of 445 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Accessible tome on behavioral economics and game theory. June 2, 2004

By David J. Gannon

Format:Hardcover

The Wisdom of Crowds : Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business,Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki is, essentially, a thoroughly accessible and readable tome on applied behavioral economics and game theory.

I know that doesn't sound too exciting, but this actually is a fascinating book that is something of a page turner if you have even the most vestigial interest in the topic.

The premise isn't new-those who are denizens of Wall Street and know Robert Prechter's oft cited work with Elliott Wave Theory will know something of the underlying premises of the book. However, Surowiecki takes this notion and moves well beyond the confined world if inventing (though he covers that as well) to apply the principles he delineates to life in general-behavior in traffic, tracking and responding to disease, navigating the internet and so on.

The strength of the boom is Surowiecki's ability to render the underpinnings of his theoretical paradigm in easily understandable terms and examples. Additionally, the book features an excellent opening that provides a wonderful foundation as regards applied behavioral economics and game theory in general.

On the other hand, Surowiecki tends to play both sides of the street. He uses his "expert" position on the subject to configure his arguments and analysis to tilt the weight of evidence behind his theory in many cases. In other words, his familiarity with where he wants this to go influences his choices of examples. Moreover, he relies on too few examples in too many cases. For example, the world of wall Street should have provided a wealth of examples as to the validity-and the errors-inherent in his theory.... His choices seem to be crafted to provide maximum support while eliminating any element of contraindication whatsoever.

So, in the end, despite the fact that Surowiecki has written a wonderfully readable book, and posited some fascinating theoretical axioms, the book feels a bit to tilted to be thoroughly honest with the subject matter in an applied arena. Surowiecki gives us much food for thought but also leaves us with reasons to doubt somewhat his objectivity and intellectual honesty. That fact detracts frm the value of the book, and that's a shame. Read more ›

281 of 309 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Counter-Intuitive Notion June 14, 2004

By Craig L. Howe VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In 1906, Francis Galton, known for his work on statistics and heredity, came across a weight-judging contest at the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. This encounter was to challenge the foundations of his life's study.

An ox was on display and for six-pence fair-goers could buy a stamped and numbered ticket, fill in their names and their guesses of the animal's weight after it had been slaughtered and dressed. The best guess received a prize.

Eight hundred people tried their luck. They were diverse. Many had no knowledge of livestock; others were butchers and farmers. In Galton's mind this was a perfect analogy for democracy. He wanted to prove the average voter was capable of very little. Yet to his surprise, when he averaged the guesses, the total came to 1197 pounds. After the ox had been slaughtered, it weighted 1198.

James Surowiecki takes Galton's counterintuitive notion and explores its ramification for business, government, science and the economy. It is a book about the world as it is. At the same time, it is a book about the world as it might be. Most of us believe that valuable nuggets of knowledge are concentrated in few minds. We believe the solution to our complex problems lies in finding the right person. When all we have to do, Surowiecki demonstrates over and over, is ask the gathered crowd.

The well-written book is divided into two parts. The first deals with theory; the second offers case studies. Believe it or not, I found it to be a page-turner. The author has that precious ability to render the complex in simple, understandable and interesting prose.

I have long been an admirer of H. L.... Mencken who once wrote, "No one is this world, so far as I know, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

By the time I finished this book, I believed Mencken was wrong. Read more ›

58 of 61 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading June 28, 2004

By "chrisbooth34"

Format:Hardcover

This is one of the most entertaining and intellectually engaging books I've come across in a long while. Surowiecki has a gift for making complex ideas accessible, and he has a wonderful eye for the telling anecdote. His thesis about the intelligence of groups made up of diverse, independent decision-makers seems initially counterintuitive, but by the end of the book it seems almost obvious, because of all the evidence Surowiecki piles up on its behalf.

The book does cover a lot of ground in not very much space, and the pace of the argument is at times too fast. But the throughline of the argument is almost always clear, and the stories Surowiecki tells are often memorable. The chapter on NASA's mismanagement of the Columbia mission and the tale of how a man named John Craven relied on collective wisdom to find a lost submarine are especially striking.

This is one of those books that I expect people will still be talking about and referring to years or even decades from now. It's also a book that I hope will have a concrete impact on the way that people make decisions, since the implications of Surowiecki's argument are radical in the best way.

170 of 197 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointingly, an unconvincing intellectual muddle June 12, 2004

By Aaron Swartz

Format:Hardcover

Upon hearing about a book on "the wisdom of crowds", I expected it to answer three qeustions: Are crowds wise?, When are they wise?, and Why are they wise? Sadly, this book answers none of them.

Are crowds wise? Surowiecki fills his pages with unconvincing anecdotes. He has only a handful of real studies and he buries them randomly throughout the book. Worse, Surowiecki sometimes describes a study that would be easy to conduct, but instead of doing it he simply tells us what he expects the results would be. And despite the book's constant championing of dissent, Surowiecki offers no evidence that cuts against his argument. Instead, every failure of a crowd simply helps prove his thesis, since he claims it failed because it violated one of his vaugely-stated rules.

When are crowds wise? Surowiecki offers only untested speculation. He claims they need "diversity, independence, and a particular kind of decentralization" (oddly, by decentralization Surowiecki appears to mean aggregation). Surowiecki never defines any of these particularly clearly but instead gives lots of examples. This makes them useless as predictors of a crowd's intelligence which is probably why Surowiecki makes no attempt to test them.

Why are crowds wise? Surowiecki doesn't even bother to answer this one, even though it's the first half of the books subtitle. He considers the question briefly on page 10, only to spout some empty sayings (crowds are "information minus error") and wonder in amazement ("who knew ... we can collectively make so much sense") before finally concluding "You could say it's as if we've been programmed to be collectively smart."

Perhaps noticing these weaknesses, Surowiecki gets all this out of the way in the first 40% of the book.... The remainder is dedicated to larger collections of anecdotes Surowiecki likens to case studies. But even they disappoint. While Surowiecki has lots of stories, few are particularly enlightening or even memorable. Surowiecki does little analysis of the stories and does not draw out larger lessons. He assumes he is right and only stops to look down upon those who disagree.

I'm especially disappointed since I expected the book to be good. I love Surowiecki's weekly column in the _New Yorker_ and I suspect he is right about a lot. But instead of making a convincing argument, Surowiecki just stirs together anecdotes from his columns. The result, not suprisingly, is an intellectual muddle.

One thing the book does teach (although not clearly) is the wisdom of _dissent_. You can ensure dissent by collecting a large group and keeping the members from talking to each other (since people are usually smart but afraid of going against the grain), by ensuring some members of the group vocally disagree (since they will force the others to better justify their positions), or by forcing them to try to justify all sides (since that will keep them from prejudging the question).

All of which makes it ironic that Surowiecki's book fails because of a lack of dissent. Nothing goes against the grain, he doesn't justify his positions, and he has clearly prejudged the question. It would seem he needs a crowd to make him wise. Read more ›