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
central enormous experience good life work
For most Americans, work is central to their experience of the world, and the corporation is one of the fundamental institutions of American life, with an enormous impact, for good and ill, on how we live, think, and feel.
business follows
In some respects, the video-game business is a lot like the razor business, which follows a simple model: Give away the razor, gouge 'em on the price of the blades.
economic history learning manage might people
You might say that economic history is the history of people learning to manage risk.
capital excellent human
The U.S. is excellent at importing cheap products from the rest of the world. Let's try importing some human capital instead.
smart thinking way
Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.
dream procrastination self
Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination, and many studies suggest that procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that of course creates a vicious cycle.
hard-work intelligent skills
Auto repair, piloting, skiing, perhaps even management: these are skills that yield to application, hard work, and native talent. But forecasting an uncertain future and deciding the best course of action in the face of that future are much less likely to do so. And much of what we've seen so far suggests that a large group of diverse individuals will come up with better and more robust forecasts and make more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled "decision maker."
diversity decision independence
Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.
smart independent thinking
For a crowd to be smart, the people in it need to be not only diverse in their perspectives but also, relatively speaking, independent of each other. In other words, you need people to be thinking for themselves, rather than following the lead of those around them.
greed financial moments
It's a familiar truism that at any one moment, financial markets are dominated by either fear or greed. But the healthiest markets are those that are animated by both fear and greed at the same time.
immigration reform borders
Workers who come to the U.S. see their wages and their standard of living boosted sharply simply by crossing the border. That's a good thing, and one of the best arguments for immigration reform, even if you'll rarely hear a politician make it.
mistrust mediums capitalism
Movies' mistrust of capitalism is almost as old as the medium itself.
confusing corporations substance
In confusing stock options with ownership, corporations confuse trappings with substance.
desire sirens arise
The desire for reinvention seems to arise most often when companies hear the siren call of synergy and start to expand beyond their core businesses.