James Surowiecki
James Surowiecki
James Michael Surowieckiis an American journalist. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
CountryUnited States of America
smart independent people
The problem is that groups are only smart when the people in them are as independent as possible. This is the paradox of the wisdom of crowds.
writing thinking comforting
I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.
independent perspective people
The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.
mean competition profit-margin
What corporations fear is the phenomenon now known, rather inelegantly, as 'commoditization.' What the term means is simply the conversion of the market for a given product into a commodity market, which is characterized by declining prices and profit margins, increasing competition, and lowered barriers to entry.
risk cost done
When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren't factored in to the pump price - among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents.
clever honesty ignorance
When Americans are asked to rank professions in terms of honesty and ethics, insurance agents routinely end up near the bottom of the list - somewhere between politicians and car salesmen. Generally, insurers are seen as clever hucksters who prey on insecurity and ignorance to sell people what they don't need at prices they shouldn't have to pay.
science numbers people
Unfortunately, there is something of a flaw in this idealized picture of the way the scientific community discovers truth. And the flaw is that most scientific work never gets noticed. Study after study has shown that most scientific papers are read by almost no one, while a small number of papers are read by many people.
self taught-us worry
But, if recent history has taught us anything, it’s that self-regulation doesn’t work in finance, and that worries about reputation are a weak deterrent to corporate malfeasance.
wisdom smart mean
The fact that cognitive diversity matters does not mean that if you assemble a group of diverse but thoroughly uninformed people, their collective wisdom will be smarter than an expert's. But if you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you're better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are.
successful keys people
One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.
diversity decision judgement
In part because individual judgement is not accurate enough or consistent enough, cognitive diversity is essential to good decision making.
benefits may chance
The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization's benefits.
smart people groups
Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them.
community doe investment
What the investment community does like is short-term measures designed to boost share prices.