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 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. Groups are 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, 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.

©2004 James Surowiecki (P)2004 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"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." (Publishers Weekly)

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.

Outdated today (2013)

The book is highly listenable but suffers greatly from events which have transpired in the years since its original publication (2005 vs. today 2013). The financial crisis and stock market crash really do poke holes in a lot of his narrative on how groups out perform individuals.

I would not recommend using a credit today for this book because it is outdated by recent events and we have evolved technologically since those days. I do like the authors main theme that groups out perform individuals but he would first need to rewrite his story to explain recent history and include recent tech innovations.

The narrator is one of my favorites and he will make it easy to listen to the whole book in spite of the anachronisms in the narrative.

Interesting book

This book and Blink (Gladwell), I believe are related. This book explains how to capture knowledge and Blink explains why it works.

Surprising in Insights -- Scientific Sociology

This books amazed me by what I learned. While I'm still not completely sure why crowds are wise, I'm definitely convinced they are. And this has major implications for how to do leadership -- by small committee or by collective action. Collectively we are stronger than in oligarchies. Of course, world history is showing this to be true given the strength of truly democratic markets compared to those of centrally controlled governments. In a way, this book explains why the absurd experiment of letting the "common" human have a say in the government is actually working.
This book complements the insights from the social media book crowd sourcing. Together, I think they are slowly making inroads in changing way business models work in the U.S., much for the better.
This book is part of a set of books including Chris Anderson's Free, The Long Tale, Clay Shirk's Here Comes Everybody, The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick that help to explain what is happening in the 21st century sociologically, economically and politically. These new trends created predominately by the Internet and then radically expanded by human ingenuity and creativity are moving our world in rapid and exciting ways.

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.

Much better than expected

Lots of interesting human behavior info linked in ways you might never have thought about.Well read by the narrator.

I think about this book all the time

It has been awhile since I have read this but it really sticks with me. It makes capitalism make sense in some ways. I should really go back and read it again. My family will have to put up with me saying "I was reading this book..."