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

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

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.©2004 James Surowiecki; (P)2004 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

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

An exceptionally wise book.

Learn how your individuality is more important than the group and how to apply best practices in crowed decision making.

Must read...

Loved it! Gave me powerful insights into the value(or not) of "experts" vs groups of independent people. So valuable to understand how we get up best outcomes in everything from investing to sports

Very interesting, with a lot of good insights

I have read all the complaints, and all I can say is that, yes, sometimes it did get a bit boring. But never for long. And, in retrospect, the boring parts were difficult but necessary to explain the point the author was making. All points were valid, and everything was backed up by studies. Even when the author was just giving an anecdote, he would then back it up with a study to show relevance.

I highly recommend this book.

You will quote this book...

Would you listen to The Wisdom of Crowds again? Why?

I intend to listen to this book again because I source it often at work. It's a good and easy read that highlights the phenomenon of group intelligence. It would have been a 5 if it would address the new threat that too much unfiltered information poses to this; i.e. the internet + anyone with a computer can post something = misinformed public.

One sided point of view

The author is really in love with his premises of crowds being smarter than the smartest, qualified individuals. I was skeptical and happy to explore his findings. The disappointment came when all he had to offer was evidence to his thesis. It is great that a crowd can guess almost correctly a number of pebbles in a jar. But let?s not forget that a crowd also voted Hitler into power and supported him for years, with destructive results for that very crowd. French followed Napoleon to Russia with destructive results. The ?Crowd? supported the Russian Communist revolution that resulted in the famine of the 1920 where 20 Million people died?
To me the wisdom of crowds is still elusive. The author does not seem to touch on any of these examples, and the small scale experiments with students guessing a variable are just not raising to the word ?wisdom? for me.
Try it on, is a good exercise.