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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
    Unavailable
    The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations
    Unavailable
    The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

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

    Written by James Surowiecki

    Narrated by Erik Singer

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 25, 2004
    ISBN9780739311974
    Unavailable
    The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations

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    Reviews for The Wisdom of Crowds

    4/5

    813 ratings38 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A detailed look at the ways in which large groups of diverse people acting or thinking independently can, in aggregate, sometimes be much better at decision-making and problem solving than individuals or small like-minded groups. (Think, for instance, of the way that polling the audience on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire pretty much always results in the right answer.) There wasn't a whole lot in here that was particularly new to me, and I don't find all of it equally compelling, but it is a decent overview of the subject, with lots of examples. Interestingly, Surowiecki seems to spend almost as much time talking about the ways in which this sort of thing can go wrong and the conditions under which it doesn't work as he does on the ways in which it can be effective. Which I think is extremely important, actually, because otherwise it might be far too easy to take a shallow and naive reading of Surowiecki's arguments and end up subscribing to some familiar but misguided conclusions, like the idea that experts are completely useless (a notion he explicitly disclaims in the afterword to the edition of the book I have).It's also worth mentioning that this was originally published in 2004, so it now feels rather dated, certainly in its examples, if not in its conclusions. I often found myself wondering how differently it would have been written today and whether events like the subprime mortgage crisis or the 2016 election would have changed the author's thinking any, or provided him new material to work with. I especially find myself wondering if the ways in which we've come to use the internet over the past fifteen years might have actually undermined our ability to make our individual decisions independently, something Surowiecki identifies as a key component of effective collective decision-making.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book, but then it fits with a confirmation bias and I was primed for it, as I do this all the time in my design meetings - I like to fill the room with brains, because while I have great confidence in my own judgment, I know my limitations and I always get the best answers from groups.

      This was another book prompted from a quote used in the Inclusion and Diversity workshop I attended. Surowiecki uses anecdotal and empirical evidence to illustrate his points and as I indicated, my confirmation bias has a hard time arguing with his points.

      Saving this for another run through in the future...good stuff in here.
    • 3/5
      So far, so good.
    • 2/5
      Should have known better with a comparison to Malcolm Gladwell on the front.

      A mildly interesting idea with some neat examples, some misquotes and distortions, and nothing much aside from anecdotal evidence. This would have worked out much better as an article rather than a book.
    • 5/5
      Excellent read! I will need to re-read it often to remind me of the message that groups made up of diverse, independent, individuals can make good decisions - even better than the expert.
    • 4/5
      Another interesting title, The Wisdom of the Crowds. Another long subtitle: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few. These authors writing about the social media intentionally choose a very catchy, crisp and sharp title for their books. For example: The Long Tail, Everything is Miscellaneous, Here Comes Everybody, Free, Too Big to Know. But note also their way too long subtitles wherein you observe some striking similarity. Having noted this, I should say this book did not live my expectations. I think the book would have been better without the example about Francis Galton's findings about the wisdom of the crowds to accurately guess the weight of an ox. My problem with this example is that in guessing the weight of the ox, there is little intelligence (cognition) exerted. But it seems this example is widely cited whenever there is an article about wisdom of crowds. But reading through the rest of the text, it is such an interesting read, with striking analysis and discussions. The most interesting discussions are about independent decision making and the presence of disagreements rather than mere consensus. I want to use this book for my research in relation to metadata. This can be read along with Wikinomics which is even more fascinating with more practical examples.
    • 4/5
      An excellent read. Surowiecki shows how the masses are sometimes smarter than the smartest person when working together to solve problems.
    • 5/5
      it's great for understanding of social networking at the present time
    • 3/5
      The conclusion of Surowiecki's book is compelling and his anecdotal evidence makes for an enjoyable read. Overall, for me this book was a bit dull, but I believe that was a result of multiple economics courses where we discussed his theories. If you are unfamiliar with the theories of crowd wisdom, this book is a perfect introduction, very readable and insightful. If, however, you have had multiple economics courses and have heard more than a simple introduction on the group wisdom, you may find this book adds little to what you have already learned.
    • 2/5
      I enjoyed the book but ran out of steam a little during the later chapters about democracy and financial markets.

      I did however, have many sparks of recognition when he was talking about the dynamics of meetings and how small groups emphasize consensus over dissent, leading to group think and poor decisions.

    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book. The book develops the premise that crowds, under the right circumstances, can make extraordinarily good decisions. He make a number of studies showing the average of all people's inputs is surprisingly more accurate than the best member of the crowd. He also touches on when this crowd wisdom breaks down, citing such occasions as the stock market bubble, housing bubbles, and mob rule. The breakdown of crowd wisdom is only touched on, and if I have one complaint about the book, its that this is an important aspect of crowd wisdom and deserves more attention.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyed it - well written and intelligent with lots of interesting examples on how, given the right conditions, crowds can come up with some surprisingly good answers. Slightly put off by the impression that the real mission of the book was some sort of corporate training day on how to use this to improve your business....
    • 3/5
      Interesting book. Finally read it in 2007 even though the ideas in the book have had a significant impact on the strategy for the foresight team at Arup. I liked the examples and found myself agreeing with the statements being made. HOWEVER i was looking forward to some kind of conclusions that might draw together the observations - but the book (or is it a series of column articles?) just ended.
    • 5/5
      Terrific book! I like it when a book uses points-of-reference that I immediately recognize in order to draw conclusions. Mike Martz, Moneyball, The Tipping Point, and Linux are all things that I know something about; So, it doesn't take a lot of reorienting myself to understand the author's argument.
    • 4/5
      Interesting and well-written, although it seems to loose focus in the end.
    • 4/5
      Except for the last chapter, I loved this book. An amazing perspective on how and when more heads are better than one. Oddly enough, the book as a whole increased my faith in our (American) political process, while the last chapter seemed to take a dim view of democracy. Well worth the read just the same (and the audiobook was well done, too).
    • 4/5
      If the subtitle of this book had been "when the many are smarter than the few", I would have found it a bit more, well, honest. It starts by showing some circumstances where aggregating the views of large groups can get results better than any of the individuals in the group. But there are more cases in the book where group ratings and decisions go wrong than where they go right. Surowiecki seems to imply that if we could just get the right process for aggregating different views, we could overcome these difficulties. Real life rarely allows that.
    • 4/5
      This book started off great. But eventually, his examples got too random. On the plus side, this book does an excellent job of explaining when groupthink is a good thing, rather than just painting everything with a broad brush.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating book full of arcane studies which support the author's contention that under specific conditions, crowds can be extraordinarily intelligent in their choices and can be relied upon to best the experts.
    • 5/5
      I recommend this book highly! Jim Surowiecki has created a highly readable book that puts much of the decision process of groups into clear and lucid terms. Jim addresses the three types of wisdom in "crowds" or groups. These are cognitive problems, coordination and cooperation. Cognitive problems are one that have or will have a definite answer. Coordination problems require members to figure out how to coordinate their behavior with each other. The last type is cooperation where self-interested, distrustful members need to work together.For each of these types, Surowiecki provides clear examples of group operation and what are the key characteristics necessary for success.While Surowiecki is a proponent of the value and wisdom of collective decision, he also recognizes cases when the collective decision process can go awry (for example, stock market bubbles) and discusses the root causes.
    • 3/5
      Interesting book. Finally read it in 2007 even though the ideas in the book have had a significant impact on the strategy for the foresight team at Arup. I liked the examples and found myself agreeing with the statements being made. HOWEVER i was looking forward to some kind of conclusions that might draw together the observations - but the book (or is it a series of column articles?) just ended.
    • 4/5
      The thesis of this book is that groups possess collective intelligence and are surprisingly wise under the right circumstances, even when they are composed by and large of very mediocre ndividuals. It was very interesting to read it after _GG&S_. First, it confirms that big groups of people are needed to accomplish progress. Secondly, it discusses what circumstances and mechanisms cause certain inventions to catch on or not, which I found very interesting as an extension to the discussion in GGS of some societies adopting inventions and some failing to notice their significance. This is among a million other things it discusses. Very interesting, especially, for someone, like me, who knows little about studies in groups, group decision making and the mechanisms behind forces like the stock market prices or lotteries.
    • 5/5
      It give me an insight into a way that decision making at Quakers works or not when blocked.
    • 3/5
      Reasonably interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive information about how groups of people can exhibit a surprising emergent intelligence. Also a bit about how this can go wrong.Didn't really need to be booklength though; an article would have been fine.
    • 4/5
      This is a really interesting book with the premise that the madness of crowds (though it exists) isn't anything compared to the wisdom of crowds. Great for anyone with an interest in business, economics, the stock market, or even psychology.
    • 5/5
      Another book similar to Tipping Point that makes sense but you really need to read to get the full understanding of what the author is saying. I think this is one of those books you need to read a couple of times to really have it sink in and understand the impact. It should change the way you make decisions.
    • 4/5
      Interesting, quick and easily digestible overview (I listen at 1.5x speed). It is quite repetitive but the fast forward button is always there.

      Issue to flag: chapter 1 and chapter 4 are identical.
    • 4/5
      Good set of data points to showcase the title. Sometimes gets to be repetitive. Particularly because the initial chapters are in the authors voice and then get into a presenters voice with some content repeating.
    • 4/5
      Really good book on the way a crowd can have a better guess at the solution to a problem that an expert. Well worth reading
    • 3/5
      I don't really have a lot to say about this book. I agree with the basic argument that groups can be smarter than individuals at certain tasks, but I wanted more substantive support. The anecdotes and illustrations used to back up the author's claims simply don't add up to a very strong argument. They're too circumstantial.

      However, I was entertained and I think I probably learned something about how to set up a group to make better decisions.