The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
6 Rating(s)
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The Wisdom of Crowds
Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations

Author: James Surowiecki

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 9 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/09/2004

Synopsis

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: 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. 

With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.

About The Author

James 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.Grover Gardner’s narration career spans 25 years and over 550 audiobook titles. AudioFile magazine has called him one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and features him in their annual “Golden Voices” update. Publishers Weekly named him Audiobook Narrator of the Year for 2005. His recordings have garnered 18 Earphones Awards from AudioFile and an Audie Award from the Audio Publishers’ Association.

Reviews

Goodreads review by TK

I enjoyed this book. I wrote a review and then read everyone else's review and decided to return to write something more to the point. Some people did not even finish the book so I'd like highlight a few important concepts Surowiecki was trying to communicate. The four essential conditions that make......more

Goodreads review by Mike

Two heads are better than one. And a hundred heads are even better. And a thousand are almost perfect. Watch the asymptote as it approaches infinity... You are getting veeeerrrry sleeeeepy... This is a very interesting concept, fleshed out into a very boring book. It seems like a graduate thesis that......more

Goodreads review by Sara

“The Wisdom of Crowds is not an argument against experts, but against our excessive faith in the single individual decision maker. I think there are two big problems with relying on a single individual—no matter how well-informed. The first is that true experts—that is, the real titans—are surprisin......more

Goodreads review by Ben

"As he walked through the exhibition that day, Galton came across a weight-judging competition. A fat ox hade been selected and placed on display, and members of a agathering crowd were lining up to place wagers on the weight of the ox. (Or rather, they were placing wagers on what the weight of the......more

Quotes

What the crowd is saying about The Wisdom of Crowds:

“The Wisdom of Crowds is dazzling. It is one of those books that will turn your world upside down. It’s an adventure story, a manifesto, and the most brilliant book on business, society, and everyday life that I’ve read in years.”
—Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point

"Most crowds of readers would agree that Jim Surowiecki is one of the most interesting journalists working today. Now he has written a book that will exceed even their expectations. Anyone open to rethinking their most basic assumptions--people who enjoyed The Tipping Point, say--will love this book."
--Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball.

“This book should be in every thinking businessperson’s library. Without exception. At a time when corporate leaders have shown they’re not always deserving of our trust, James Surowiecki has brilliantly revealed that we can trust each other. That we count. That our collective effort is far more important than the lofty predictions of those CEO-kings we have worshipped for too long.”
—Po Bronson, author of What Should I Do With My Life?

“Jim Surowiecki has done the near impossible. He’s taken what in other hands would be a dense and difficult subject and given us a book that is engaging, surprising, and utterly persuasive. The Wisdom of Crowds will change the way you think about markets, economics, and a large swatch of everyday life.”
—Joe Nocera, editorial director of Fortune magazine and author of A Piece of the Action.

“It has become increasingly recognized that the average opinions of groups is frequently more accurate than most individuals in the group. As a special case, economists have spoken of the role of markets in assembling dispersed information. The author has written a most interesting survey of the many studies in this area and discussed the limits as well as the achievements of self-organization.”
—Kenneth Arrow, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and Professor of Economics (Emeritus), Stanford University

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