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The Wisdom of Crowds
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Top positive review
11 people found this helpful
4.0 out of 5 starsSmoothly written, valuable points, somewhat one-sided
ByMax Moreon March 25, 2005
Crowds have a bad rap. Our opinion of collective decision making and behavior has been darkened by first-hand observation of events such as the stock market bubble and crash, and by classic works such as Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. That is unfortunate, argues James Surowiecki because, under the right circumstances, groups "are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them."
If nothing else, The Wisdom of Crowds should entertain you. It may not do much more than this if you are already well read in economics, complexity theory, decision analysis, organizational theory, social psychology, prospect theory and other fields. Few readers will have delved into all the relevant areas to any great extent, so most can expect to learn something new, interesting, and quite possibly useful. Surowiecki's wide-ranging gathering of sources to support his argument is a virtue, yet it's also something of a problem. The difficulty of knowing much about all the areas on which he draws makes it easy for him to pick and choose studies and arguments selectively. While many of his points are well made, the way he supports his case sometimes seems one-sided.
In evaluating and supporting the idea of the wisdom of crowds, Surowiecki looks at how collective intelligence can be applied to three kinds of problems: Cognition problems (which have definitive solutions), coordination problems, and cooperation problems (which require self-interested agents to work together). The first half of the book sets out the theory, thoroughly and entertainingly illustrated by examples. These include the smarts of the audience on game shows, how to design an excellent search engine, why short selling is a good thing, and how a group finds a lost submarine. The second half of the book applies the ideas to show various ways in which people organize toward common goals in cases such as traffic, science, juries, committees, business organizations, markets, and democracies.
Among the main points that may be useful to executives, Surowiecki emphasizes that for the crowd to be wise, it must be characterized by diversity of opinion, independence of members from one another, and a specific kind of decentralization, and there needs to be a good method for aggregating opinions. He stresses that the best collective decisions result from disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.
While corporations often rely on experts, the book does well at challenging our confidence in expertise as compared to the average of the crowd. In the course of a discussion of the role of independence, we learn that to improve your organization's decision making you should ensure that decisions are made simultaneously rather than one after the other. Finally, I have to second Surowiecki's puzzlement at the apparent lack of interest by companies in using markets (such as decision markets) for corporate strategy and market research.
If nothing else, The Wisdom of Crowds should entertain you. It may not do much more than this if you are already well read in economics, complexity theory, decision analysis, organizational theory, social psychology, prospect theory and other fields. Few readers will have delved into all the relevant areas to any great extent, so most can expect to learn something new, interesting, and quite possibly useful. Surowiecki's wide-ranging gathering of sources to support his argument is a virtue, yet it's also something of a problem. The difficulty of knowing much about all the areas on which he draws makes it easy for him to pick and choose studies and arguments selectively. While many of his points are well made, the way he supports his case sometimes seems one-sided.
In evaluating and supporting the idea of the wisdom of crowds, Surowiecki looks at how collective intelligence can be applied to three kinds of problems: Cognition problems (which have definitive solutions), coordination problems, and cooperation problems (which require self-interested agents to work together). The first half of the book sets out the theory, thoroughly and entertainingly illustrated by examples. These include the smarts of the audience on game shows, how to design an excellent search engine, why short selling is a good thing, and how a group finds a lost submarine. The second half of the book applies the ideas to show various ways in which people organize toward common goals in cases such as traffic, science, juries, committees, business organizations, markets, and democracies.
Among the main points that may be useful to executives, Surowiecki emphasizes that for the crowd to be wise, it must be characterized by diversity of opinion, independence of members from one another, and a specific kind of decentralization, and there needs to be a good method for aggregating opinions. He stresses that the best collective decisions result from disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.
While corporations often rely on experts, the book does well at challenging our confidence in expertise as compared to the average of the crowd. In the course of a discussion of the role of independence, we learn that to improve your organization's decision making you should ensure that decisions are made simultaneously rather than one after the other. Finally, I have to second Surowiecki's puzzlement at the apparent lack of interest by companies in using markets (such as decision markets) for corporate strategy and market research.
Top critical review
2 people found this helpful
2.0 out of 5 starsThe Folly of Journalists
ByJohn C. Craveyon September 3, 2018
12 chapters, 80,000+ words, 22 pages of after notes
Surowiecki writes good thumbnails about interesting subjects like the discovery of the U.S. submarine Scorpion, bee dance, how radio was first financed, basic rules of starling flock formation and Newsfutures.com.
He also brings up an odd phenomenon: The averages of multiple guesses is usually better than the best individual guess. Because no explanation is offered, it retains the status of miracle throughout the book. In another context he offers an interesting speculation: teams of government and corporate experts are often afflicted with “groupthink”.
The rest of the book is about crowds. Two of his criteria that constitute a crowd are independence and diversity. That sounds more like a group of well-informed independent thinkers, not a crowd as we commonly understand it. THE WISDOM OF WELL-INFORMED INDEPENDENT THINKERS is probably a harder title to sell.
Surowiecki isn’t even a man of the people. Read page 233 for his endorsement of a paternalistic automatic retirement plan.
But none of this keeps Surowiecki from pushing the idea of crowd wisdom. It’s an uphill struggle because most of the examples he provides are expert-heavy and in the case of the stock market, it’s impossible to measure either independence or diversity.
Most of his examples involve numerical guesses. Crowd wisdom means that the crowd is a kind of social Ouija board. But what if you need, say, a mathematical formula? But even if you only need number-guessers, what good is a crowd? Businesses and government research get ahead by keeping secrets. How am I going to keep the guesses of 100,000 people secret?
Most of the second half is about business. Here are two things to know about that. The first is that no university economic experiment can measure anything worthwhile because millions of real dollars aren’t at risk. The second is that if Surowiecki’s syndicalist ideas worked better than capitalist ideas, they would have taken the world by storm in the 19th century when they were introduced.
And if business forecasting is a kind of wisdom, there’s an expert who always beats the crowd. His name is Warren Buffett.
2 stars
Surowiecki writes good thumbnails about interesting subjects like the discovery of the U.S. submarine Scorpion, bee dance, how radio was first financed, basic rules of starling flock formation and Newsfutures.com.
He also brings up an odd phenomenon: The averages of multiple guesses is usually better than the best individual guess. Because no explanation is offered, it retains the status of miracle throughout the book. In another context he offers an interesting speculation: teams of government and corporate experts are often afflicted with “groupthink”.
The rest of the book is about crowds. Two of his criteria that constitute a crowd are independence and diversity. That sounds more like a group of well-informed independent thinkers, not a crowd as we commonly understand it. THE WISDOM OF WELL-INFORMED INDEPENDENT THINKERS is probably a harder title to sell.
Surowiecki isn’t even a man of the people. Read page 233 for his endorsement of a paternalistic automatic retirement plan.
But none of this keeps Surowiecki from pushing the idea of crowd wisdom. It’s an uphill struggle because most of the examples he provides are expert-heavy and in the case of the stock market, it’s impossible to measure either independence or diversity.
Most of his examples involve numerical guesses. Crowd wisdom means that the crowd is a kind of social Ouija board. But what if you need, say, a mathematical formula? But even if you only need number-guessers, what good is a crowd? Businesses and government research get ahead by keeping secrets. How am I going to keep the guesses of 100,000 people secret?
Most of the second half is about business. Here are two things to know about that. The first is that no university economic experiment can measure anything worthwhile because millions of real dollars aren’t at risk. The second is that if Surowiecki’s syndicalist ideas worked better than capitalist ideas, they would have taken the world by storm in the 19th century when they were introduced.
And if business forecasting is a kind of wisdom, there’s an expert who always beats the crowd. His name is Warren Buffett.
2 stars
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ByJohn C. Craveyon September 3, 2018
12 chapters, 80,000+ words, 22 pages of after notes
Surowiecki writes good thumbnails about interesting subjects like the discovery of the U.S. submarine Scorpion, bee dance, how radio was first financed, basic rules of starling flock formation and Newsfutures.com.
He also brings up an odd phenomenon: The averages of multiple guesses is usually better than the best individual guess. Because no explanation is offered, it retains the status of miracle throughout the book. In another context he offers an interesting speculation: teams of government and corporate experts are often afflicted with “groupthink”.
The rest of the book is about crowds. Two of his criteria that constitute a crowd are independence and diversity. That sounds more like a group of well-informed independent thinkers, not a crowd as we commonly understand it. THE WISDOM OF WELL-INFORMED INDEPENDENT THINKERS is probably a harder title to sell.
Surowiecki isn’t even a man of the people. Read page 233 for his endorsement of a paternalistic automatic retirement plan.
But none of this keeps Surowiecki from pushing the idea of crowd wisdom. It’s an uphill struggle because most of the examples he provides are expert-heavy and in the case of the stock market, it’s impossible to measure either independence or diversity.
Most of his examples involve numerical guesses. Crowd wisdom means that the crowd is a kind of social Ouija board. But what if you need, say, a mathematical formula? But even if you only need number-guessers, what good is a crowd? Businesses and government research get ahead by keeping secrets. How am I going to keep the guesses of 100,000 people secret?
Most of the second half is about business. Here are two things to know about that. The first is that no university economic experiment can measure anything worthwhile because millions of real dollars aren’t at risk. The second is that if Surowiecki’s syndicalist ideas worked better than capitalist ideas, they would have taken the world by storm in the 19th century when they were introduced.
And if business forecasting is a kind of wisdom, there’s an expert who always beats the crowd. His name is Warren Buffett.
2 stars
Surowiecki writes good thumbnails about interesting subjects like the discovery of the U.S. submarine Scorpion, bee dance, how radio was first financed, basic rules of starling flock formation and Newsfutures.com.
He also brings up an odd phenomenon: The averages of multiple guesses is usually better than the best individual guess. Because no explanation is offered, it retains the status of miracle throughout the book. In another context he offers an interesting speculation: teams of government and corporate experts are often afflicted with “groupthink”.
The rest of the book is about crowds. Two of his criteria that constitute a crowd are independence and diversity. That sounds more like a group of well-informed independent thinkers, not a crowd as we commonly understand it. THE WISDOM OF WELL-INFORMED INDEPENDENT THINKERS is probably a harder title to sell.
Surowiecki isn’t even a man of the people. Read page 233 for his endorsement of a paternalistic automatic retirement plan.
But none of this keeps Surowiecki from pushing the idea of crowd wisdom. It’s an uphill struggle because most of the examples he provides are expert-heavy and in the case of the stock market, it’s impossible to measure either independence or diversity.
Most of his examples involve numerical guesses. Crowd wisdom means that the crowd is a kind of social Ouija board. But what if you need, say, a mathematical formula? But even if you only need number-guessers, what good is a crowd? Businesses and government research get ahead by keeping secrets. How am I going to keep the guesses of 100,000 people secret?
Most of the second half is about business. Here are two things to know about that. The first is that no university economic experiment can measure anything worthwhile because millions of real dollars aren’t at risk. The second is that if Surowiecki’s syndicalist ideas worked better than capitalist ideas, they would have taken the world by storm in the 19th century when they were introduced.
And if business forecasting is a kind of wisdom, there’s an expert who always beats the crowd. His name is Warren Buffett.
2 stars
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ByMax Moreon March 25, 2005
Crowds have a bad rap. Our opinion of collective decision making and behavior has been darkened by first-hand observation of events such as the stock market bubble and crash, and by classic works such as Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. That is unfortunate, argues James Surowiecki because, under the right circumstances, groups "are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them."
If nothing else, The Wisdom of Crowds should entertain you. It may not do much more than this if you are already well read in economics, complexity theory, decision analysis, organizational theory, social psychology, prospect theory and other fields. Few readers will have delved into all the relevant areas to any great extent, so most can expect to learn something new, interesting, and quite possibly useful. Surowiecki's wide-ranging gathering of sources to support his argument is a virtue, yet it's also something of a problem. The difficulty of knowing much about all the areas on which he draws makes it easy for him to pick and choose studies and arguments selectively. While many of his points are well made, the way he supports his case sometimes seems one-sided.
In evaluating and supporting the idea of the wisdom of crowds, Surowiecki looks at how collective intelligence can be applied to three kinds of problems: Cognition problems (which have definitive solutions), coordination problems, and cooperation problems (which require self-interested agents to work together). The first half of the book sets out the theory, thoroughly and entertainingly illustrated by examples. These include the smarts of the audience on game shows, how to design an excellent search engine, why short selling is a good thing, and how a group finds a lost submarine. The second half of the book applies the ideas to show various ways in which people organize toward common goals in cases such as traffic, science, juries, committees, business organizations, markets, and democracies.
Among the main points that may be useful to executives, Surowiecki emphasizes that for the crowd to be wise, it must be characterized by diversity of opinion, independence of members from one another, and a specific kind of decentralization, and there needs to be a good method for aggregating opinions. He stresses that the best collective decisions result from disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.
While corporations often rely on experts, the book does well at challenging our confidence in expertise as compared to the average of the crowd. In the course of a discussion of the role of independence, we learn that to improve your organization's decision making you should ensure that decisions are made simultaneously rather than one after the other. Finally, I have to second Surowiecki's puzzlement at the apparent lack of interest by companies in using markets (such as decision markets) for corporate strategy and market research.
If nothing else, The Wisdom of Crowds should entertain you. It may not do much more than this if you are already well read in economics, complexity theory, decision analysis, organizational theory, social psychology, prospect theory and other fields. Few readers will have delved into all the relevant areas to any great extent, so most can expect to learn something new, interesting, and quite possibly useful. Surowiecki's wide-ranging gathering of sources to support his argument is a virtue, yet it's also something of a problem. The difficulty of knowing much about all the areas on which he draws makes it easy for him to pick and choose studies and arguments selectively. While many of his points are well made, the way he supports his case sometimes seems one-sided.
In evaluating and supporting the idea of the wisdom of crowds, Surowiecki looks at how collective intelligence can be applied to three kinds of problems: Cognition problems (which have definitive solutions), coordination problems, and cooperation problems (which require self-interested agents to work together). The first half of the book sets out the theory, thoroughly and entertainingly illustrated by examples. These include the smarts of the audience on game shows, how to design an excellent search engine, why short selling is a good thing, and how a group finds a lost submarine. The second half of the book applies the ideas to show various ways in which people organize toward common goals in cases such as traffic, science, juries, committees, business organizations, markets, and democracies.
Among the main points that may be useful to executives, Surowiecki emphasizes that for the crowd to be wise, it must be characterized by diversity of opinion, independence of members from one another, and a specific kind of decentralization, and there needs to be a good method for aggregating opinions. He stresses that the best collective decisions result from disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.
While corporations often rely on experts, the book does well at challenging our confidence in expertise as compared to the average of the crowd. In the course of a discussion of the role of independence, we learn that to improve your organization's decision making you should ensure that decisions are made simultaneously rather than one after the other. Finally, I have to second Surowiecki's puzzlement at the apparent lack of interest by companies in using markets (such as decision markets) for corporate strategy and market research.
ByRichard Stowellon March 17, 2010
Suroweiki engrossed me from the beginning. Though this book appears to be a collection of anecdotes about how crowds often outthink the experts, it struck me as a blueprint for how decision-makers should harness the power of people. Thus it is a treatise on smart business and marketing, good government, and sound organization management.
As a U.S. Army veteran, the author propelled me to thoughts on how the military could use its people's collective wisdom, something on which I have written extensively:Nine Weeks: a teacher's education in Army Basic Training
Among the most relevant claims from the book is this cogent bit of logic:
"To state the obvious, unless people know what the truth is, it's unlikely they'll make the right decisions. This means being honest about performance. It means being honest about what's not happening. It means being honest about expectations. Unfortunately, there's little evidence that this kind of sharing takes place....One of the things that gets in the way of the exchange of real information is the deep-rooted hostility on the part of bosses to opposition from subordinates. This is the real cost of a top-down approach to decision making: it confers the illusion of perfectability upon the decision makers and encourages everyone else simply to play along. What makes this especially damaging is that people in an organization already have a natural inclination to avoid conflict and potential trouble. It's remarkable, in fact, that in an autocratic organization good information ever surfaces.
It's a book that anyone who has been around people should read.
As a U.S. Army veteran, the author propelled me to thoughts on how the military could use its people's collective wisdom, something on which I have written extensively:Nine Weeks: a teacher's education in Army Basic Training
Among the most relevant claims from the book is this cogent bit of logic:
"To state the obvious, unless people know what the truth is, it's unlikely they'll make the right decisions. This means being honest about performance. It means being honest about what's not happening. It means being honest about expectations. Unfortunately, there's little evidence that this kind of sharing takes place....One of the things that gets in the way of the exchange of real information is the deep-rooted hostility on the part of bosses to opposition from subordinates. This is the real cost of a top-down approach to decision making: it confers the illusion of perfectability upon the decision makers and encourages everyone else simply to play along. What makes this especially damaging is that people in an organization already have a natural inclination to avoid conflict and potential trouble. It's remarkable, in fact, that in an autocratic organization good information ever surfaces.
It's a book that anyone who has been around people should read.
ByHenry Cate IIIon February 15, 2005
In "The Wisdom of Crowds" James Surowiecki explores how often a group of people can make better decisions than the "expert" and under what situations might a group make poor choices.
One of the basic points of the book is that in making a decision people have two components, information and error. Often by aggregating the decisions of many individuals the errors will cancel out and you are left with a very good decision. Another point is that for complex problems there is no "expert" who completely and thoroughly understands the problem, and can thus give the "right" answer. Most big problems are solved by making our best guesses and then seeing if our decisions were right or good enough. A group of people, because together they have more information, can make better choices.
James Surowiecki uses a variety of interesting examples to discuss how much better decisions a group can make. His first example is how Francis Galton found that an average group of people at a county faire in England back one hundred years ago were able to guess the weight of an ox within a pound, much closer than any of the "experts" were able to get. It was fascinating to learn that within hours of the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion the stock market picked which company was responsible, by a big drop in the stock price, long before there was any clear understanding of what had happened. And within a couple weeks the international health community was able work together to understand SARS, without any guiding hand or one organization in charge.
The author also explores under what conditions a group of people might make a poor decision. He found that a group of experts, who all tend to have a similar viewpoint on a particular topic, may make a worse decision than a group with a few "less smart" people who will see a problem from different view points. Another situation that happens is where there is a vague problem for which people don't see a clear answer so if someone will go public with his answer, then other people will go along with the first answer, rather than making their best guess. He calls this information cascade. It is better that everyone be encouraged to make their best guess, and then work through a process of resolving or aggregating the decisions.
The chapter on how to pick good solutions for issues raised by new technology was fascinating. The author compared the process of how the free market finds good solutions to how a beehive looks for food. One example was the early development of the automobile. In both cases scouts go out looking for solutions (honey or car designs) and bring them back to be evaluated by the group. The market reviewed hundreds of designs for cars and gave feedback on which designs were better. The basic design quickly developed. It is key to have a system which generates lots of alternatives and allows losers to be abandoned quickly. It is important to have both diversity of solutions and diversity of perspectives to generate better results.
Some books are interesting and educational, but after reading them there is little need to go back and reread them. You can learn the basic lessons in one reading. "The Wisdom of Crowds" is one of those which needs to be reread every so often because there are so many interesting ideas explained and thoughts explored. It is well written and is worth the time to read and worth thinking about after reading.
One of the basic points of the book is that in making a decision people have two components, information and error. Often by aggregating the decisions of many individuals the errors will cancel out and you are left with a very good decision. Another point is that for complex problems there is no "expert" who completely and thoroughly understands the problem, and can thus give the "right" answer. Most big problems are solved by making our best guesses and then seeing if our decisions were right or good enough. A group of people, because together they have more information, can make better choices.
James Surowiecki uses a variety of interesting examples to discuss how much better decisions a group can make. His first example is how Francis Galton found that an average group of people at a county faire in England back one hundred years ago were able to guess the weight of an ox within a pound, much closer than any of the "experts" were able to get. It was fascinating to learn that within hours of the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion the stock market picked which company was responsible, by a big drop in the stock price, long before there was any clear understanding of what had happened. And within a couple weeks the international health community was able work together to understand SARS, without any guiding hand or one organization in charge.
The author also explores under what conditions a group of people might make a poor decision. He found that a group of experts, who all tend to have a similar viewpoint on a particular topic, may make a worse decision than a group with a few "less smart" people who will see a problem from different view points. Another situation that happens is where there is a vague problem for which people don't see a clear answer so if someone will go public with his answer, then other people will go along with the first answer, rather than making their best guess. He calls this information cascade. It is better that everyone be encouraged to make their best guess, and then work through a process of resolving or aggregating the decisions.
The chapter on how to pick good solutions for issues raised by new technology was fascinating. The author compared the process of how the free market finds good solutions to how a beehive looks for food. One example was the early development of the automobile. In both cases scouts go out looking for solutions (honey or car designs) and bring them back to be evaluated by the group. The market reviewed hundreds of designs for cars and gave feedback on which designs were better. The basic design quickly developed. It is key to have a system which generates lots of alternatives and allows losers to be abandoned quickly. It is important to have both diversity of solutions and diversity of perspectives to generate better results.
Some books are interesting and educational, but after reading them there is little need to go back and reread them. You can learn the basic lessons in one reading. "The Wisdom of Crowds" is one of those which needs to be reread every so often because there are so many interesting ideas explained and thoughts explored. It is well written and is worth the time to read and worth thinking about after reading.
James Surowiecki has been writing for the New Yorker for over a decade. This is his first book, and it was published in 2005.
Surowiecki looks out how using the judgement of the group helps to make better decisions, as long as the group is diverse, comes by their knowledge separately and gets to make their judgements (votes) at the same time (so they aren't unduly influenced by early voters or those with more power).
I've made it an extra credit book in my senior social work class at Rutgers, and I think that it is a wonderful book about how we think and make decisions (on par with Outliers & How We Know What Isn't So).
Surowiecki looks out how using the judgement of the group helps to make better decisions, as long as the group is diverse, comes by their knowledge separately and gets to make their judgements (votes) at the same time (so they aren't unduly influenced by early voters or those with more power).
I've made it an extra credit book in my senior social work class at Rutgers, and I think that it is a wonderful book about how we think and make decisions (on par with Outliers & How We Know What Isn't So).
ByRuben Misrahion February 7, 2010
Surowiecki brings to the forefront an amazing collection of anecdotes and facts that support his main thesis: crowds 'can' be wise, useful and if carefully crafted, their participation can be spectacularly beneficial.
I've never given much thought about 'diversity,' a term that to me meant a way to give away with discrimination. Surowiecky proves that diversity is one of the necessary ingredients to benefit from a crowd.
I would blankly recommend this book to everyone. To some it may mean a way to apply this knowledge, to others, an understanding of how crowds work (and when they don't) is just intellectually stimulant.
I realize this may sound like an advertisement. I have no disclaimers to make, I have no specific interest or relationship with the author, I just was blown away with the concept.
This is a book I will treasure and re-read again.
I've never given much thought about 'diversity,' a term that to me meant a way to give away with discrimination. Surowiecky proves that diversity is one of the necessary ingredients to benefit from a crowd.
I would blankly recommend this book to everyone. To some it may mean a way to apply this knowledge, to others, an understanding of how crowds work (and when they don't) is just intellectually stimulant.
I realize this may sound like an advertisement. I have no disclaimers to make, I have no specific interest or relationship with the author, I just was blown away with the concept.
This is a book I will treasure and re-read again.
Bypontoon November 9, 2008
I read this for a MBA class. Out of the stack of books assigned, so far, this is the only one I liked. It is relevant to today's curious questions of how to get crowds engaged, how crowds behave, and why we even care.
I'm trying to teach people to work collaboratively together at work. They "think" they already are doing this but the author gives me new ideas on how to further their participation in team work. I find that in corporate america, people contribute mostly in their assigned role. "I am a business analyst so I don't give my 2 cents when solutioning". Yikes it drives me crazy that they put their single hats on then multi-task when we start talking about something that isn't their specialty.
Anyway, I underlined something on every other page which is a sign that I found this useful and something I will want to learn to apply.
Did I mention how good a writer this guy is?
I'm trying to teach people to work collaboratively together at work. They "think" they already are doing this but the author gives me new ideas on how to further their participation in team work. I find that in corporate america, people contribute mostly in their assigned role. "I am a business analyst so I don't give my 2 cents when solutioning". Yikes it drives me crazy that they put their single hats on then multi-task when we start talking about something that isn't their specialty.
Anyway, I underlined something on every other page which is a sign that I found this useful and something I will want to learn to apply.
Did I mention how good a writer this guy is?
ByCoert Visseron February 22, 2005
It is often believed that a good remedy against the madness of groups is to give much power to extraordinary individuals. People who are aware that they cannot fully understand complex problems often believe that there are other people, more intelligent, knowledgeable and strong than they are, who do posses the answers to these problems. They are quite prepared to follow and depend on these leaders, people who do seem and or pretend to know the answers to pressing complex problems. But is this wise? No!
James Surowiecki fights the idea that group decisions can only be mad and lead to misery and that extraordinary individuals should therefore solve pressing problems. He says that the potential of groups is underestimated and the value of expertise overestimed:
"... the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made".
If the circumstances are right groups can behave highly intelligent, often more intelligent than even the most intelligent individuals. Under those circumstances, groups are better at solving problems, making predictions, assessing situations accurately and deciding wisely.
The right circumstances for collective wisdom are:
1. Diversity: when arguments, views and opinions do not differ from each other they don't add anything to one another. Diversity guarantees that multiple perspectives are brought into the decision-making process and that a broader range of information is included.
2. Independence: when individual group members are strongly influenced by arguments, information, experiences and onions of others this will suppress the diversity of input into the decision-making process. This increases the likelihood of groupthink.
3. Decentralization: the chance to achieve collective wisdom is greatest when individuals get a chance to bring their own information and experience into the process. Surowiecki calls this `local experience'.
4. Aggregation: a mechanism and a process to come to an integration of the different views and opinions. It is very important to prevent there will be too much interaction before each other to strongly so that the pressure to conform may get too strong and any deviating opinions will be suppressed.
An intelligent group does not ask of its individual members to conform to the dominant view. Instead it has created a mechanism that resembles a democracy or a market. Individual group members get the opportunity to bring in their own information and opinions and are not forced to change their views. Their independence is explicitly protected.
I found this book very interesting and accessible.
James Surowiecki fights the idea that group decisions can only be mad and lead to misery and that extraordinary individuals should therefore solve pressing problems. He says that the potential of groups is underestimated and the value of expertise overestimed:
"... the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made".
If the circumstances are right groups can behave highly intelligent, often more intelligent than even the most intelligent individuals. Under those circumstances, groups are better at solving problems, making predictions, assessing situations accurately and deciding wisely.
The right circumstances for collective wisdom are:
1. Diversity: when arguments, views and opinions do not differ from each other they don't add anything to one another. Diversity guarantees that multiple perspectives are brought into the decision-making process and that a broader range of information is included.
2. Independence: when individual group members are strongly influenced by arguments, information, experiences and onions of others this will suppress the diversity of input into the decision-making process. This increases the likelihood of groupthink.
3. Decentralization: the chance to achieve collective wisdom is greatest when individuals get a chance to bring their own information and experience into the process. Surowiecki calls this `local experience'.
4. Aggregation: a mechanism and a process to come to an integration of the different views and opinions. It is very important to prevent there will be too much interaction before each other to strongly so that the pressure to conform may get too strong and any deviating opinions will be suppressed.
An intelligent group does not ask of its individual members to conform to the dominant view. Instead it has created a mechanism that resembles a democracy or a market. Individual group members get the opportunity to bring in their own information and opinions and are not forced to change their views. Their independence is explicitly protected.
I found this book very interesting and accessible.
ByE. Sungon April 1, 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book cover to cover.
The book is not perfect and I think someone mentions that it is sometimes self-contradictory. I think the reason is that though the author has views and observations about crowds in general, the theories in the book are excellent guides but are not absolutes. With dealing with social groups, it would be silly to state that something is always the case.
I think the book is fun to read but I think if you are in management or business, this book is vitally important. It is a book about decision making and collective wisdom. It does not give all the answers but it does make you think carefully about how you structure an organization to make quality decisions.
To sum it up, it is important to think about how we think. This book helps us understand ourselves (as a group) a little better.
The book is not perfect and I think someone mentions that it is sometimes self-contradictory. I think the reason is that though the author has views and observations about crowds in general, the theories in the book are excellent guides but are not absolutes. With dealing with social groups, it would be silly to state that something is always the case.
I think the book is fun to read but I think if you are in management or business, this book is vitally important. It is a book about decision making and collective wisdom. It does not give all the answers but it does make you think carefully about how you structure an organization to make quality decisions.
To sum it up, it is important to think about how we think. This book helps us understand ourselves (as a group) a little better.
ByM. Strongon January 13, 2005
Surowiecki got the first element of literary success right by picking a good subject. The idea that random groups of people have an incredible collective wisdom that can be tapped into under the right conditions is truly interesting. Surowiecki then goes on to get the second piece of the puzzle right - he tells a good story. His real-world examples of the wisdom of crowds in action are engaging and really capture your imagination and make you consider the power and possibilities of the wisdom of crowds -- which is where this book falls a little short of five stars.
If this book only closed by suggesting a practical approach to implementing the wisdom of crowds in new and different situations, helping readers tap into the power of the concept, this would be a five star book. It falls slightly short but is still absolutely worth the read.
If this book only closed by suggesting a practical approach to implementing the wisdom of crowds in new and different situations, helping readers tap into the power of the concept, this would be a five star book. It falls slightly short but is still absolutely worth the read.
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