This struck me as pop management insights: a casual hypothesis with patchy evidence. The examples provided seem cherry-picked, and there is little effort to provide counter-examples or opposing claims. The central idea is worthy of a paper, but the book-length treatment does not build a compelling argument worthy of more than a brief mention in a business studies class. ( )

Not fantastic writing, but very very interesting ideas. Put a bunch of ppl together, if each one has a >50% chance of guessing right on something, the change of the group guessing right approaches 100% ( )

Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, encouraging innovation, making wise decisions, and even predicting the future—as explored in this fascinating book by New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki. ( )

http://pro-libertate.net/node/15 ( )

Another in a long line of books written with that uniquely New Yorker voice - this is like Gladwell but arguably more academic given the focus on business, management, and economics. A fascinating read, made all the more so by the fact that this guy discussed the emergence of a coronavirus twenty years before Covid. ( )

Diverse crowds make better decisions on aggregate than individuals or groups of similar experts on most topics. That's the main takeaway of the book illustrated through a number of examples. I like the idea, but some of the ideas focused on ended up not holding my interest for the time discussed. ( )

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 ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

short ramblings ( )

Surowieki writes the Financial Page for the New Yorker, and he's in top form in this book. What I learned in a nutshell: crowds themselves are very stupid (mob mentality); however, the aggregate of individual instinct and wisdom is almost infallible. Great stuff! ( )

Never have I enjoyed a book so much that I completely disagreed with. There is much I learned here about processes and fundamental workings of everyday behavioral phenomena, but his thesis doesn't hold water. I can show you oodles of examples where the crowd is downright foolish, from voting the wrong people into office, to polls revealing mind-blowing weird public opinion, to my very own board meetings where we all seem to have lost our minds. The author cherry picks examples that suit his idea while ignoring very obvious antithetical ideas, and he seems smart enough even to perhaps have penned a Devil's Advocate book called "The Stupidity of Crowds."

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. ( )

A very interesting book. If you like informative nonfiction written in a popular, easy-to-understand format, then you'll love this. ( )

This book was so bad that reviewing it feels like a waste of time, but I will briefly explain what's wrong with it. The author begins with an old idea: crowds can be wise when they exhibit diversity of opinion, independence and decentralization, and when their views can be aggregated. Hayek presented it in the context of markets in his 1945 paper "The use of knowledge in society". Like a true journalist the author has collected a heap of stories which he thinks illustrate the idea, but he's badly mistaken. Probably 60-70% of his topics are not valid examples of collective intelligence at work. Many of them are pointless and yield no conclusions whatsoever.

It seems to me that the author hasn't understood collective intelligence very well. He could have easily tested his examples by assessing whether or not they meet the four criteria he cites in the beginning - diversity, independence, decentralization and aggregation. If he had done that, weeded out the invalid cases and explained for each valid case how the criteria are met, I would have liked this book. But he seems to have forgotten the criteria as soon as he wrote them down and goes on to recount all kinds of irrelevant tales which have little or nothing to do with collective intelligence. Even in the limited number of examples where he manages to correctly identify collective intelligence at work, he usually fails to explain how the four criteria are met.

I strongly advice against reading this book. No useful lesson can be learned from an author who has a shallow understanding of the idea he's trying to convey.

The Wisdom of Crowds falls into the same genre as Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell's books, a fascinating collection of interesting stories, studies and anecdotes toward a general premise.
Surowiecki is a little more academic in writing style then the others above, but there is also a lot more information in this book then in some of the others.
The basic idea is that we are smart as a group then we are individually. He's not advocating "group think" (one of the negative manifestations of collective decision making), but rather intentional collecting of individual decisions. An example of this is your typical "guess the number of jelly beans" contest. Studies show that if you take the average of all the guesses made will be closer then the vast majority of the individual answers, and closer over a series of contests then any individuals guesses.
Time and again the research shows that if we can intelligently coordinate a "crowd", their decisions will be better then the "experts" every time.
Surowiecki gives examples from all over and discusses things like the stock market, traffic patterns, CEOs, and sports.

If you've read any of Malcolm Gladwell or Freakonomics, you'll definitely enjoy The Wisdom of Crowds. ( )

Wow! This book really challenged my assumptions regarding how decisions are made in groups of all sizes and compositions.
If you enjoyed any of Malcolm Gladwell's books, you are going to love this. It takes an activity that almost all people engage in every day and makes the reader consider it in a very different way.
I've got a lot to think about.... ( )

Updated 4/12/09. I was handing out this book to all my friends and colleagues at work, especially our president, who seemed to think a small coterie of sycophants was all he needed.

From an earlier review I wrote some time ago: Wisdom of Crowds is a very insightful book about how we make decisions. The author describes the dangers of homogeneity in promoting group think, something we will begin to see more of in the Bush second administration as he builds his Cabinet with "Yes" men and women. Analysis by social scientists shows that decisions made by groups that permit little diversity are often wrong and conformity to adhere to the majority opinion can be very strong. Solomon Asch 's studies on conformity showed that an individual would often agree with the group even if there was overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For example, when presented with a card showing lines of different lengths and asked to pick the shortest one, subjects would almost always pick the one chosen by other members of the group (the experimenter's confederates) even when it was obviously not the shortest.

Many of Surowiceki's arguments seem counter-intuitive, but he cites a fair amount of evidence that the best decisions, on average, are always made by groups rather than individuals regardless of their expertise. In fact, he says: "... the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made."

For the group decision-making process to work the best, several elements must be present.

1. A formal process for encouraging disagreement must be present;

2. The group must consist of stakeholders and non-stakeholders, i.e., people normally not part of the group should be present to make sure diversity of opinion is present. Diversity guarantees that multiple perspectives are brought into the decision-making process and that a broader range of information is included;

3. the group must belief and see that it has the responsibility for making decisions. If the decision is made elsewhere, the result is the opposite, i.e., bad results or at least not the best;

4. individuals be independent and have that independence respected to avoid being swayed by a leader or one powerful individual,

5. and there be a process for aggregating the opinions. It's important that pressure to conform be suppressed.

An intelligent group does not ask of its individual members to conform to the dominant view. Instead it creates a mechanism that resembles a democracy or a market. Individual group members get the opportunity to bring in their own information and opinions and are not forced to change their views. Their independence must be explicitly protected.

Much like army ants in a circular mill who die from exhaustion following a lost leader, humans will often indulge in group think and group action even if it is not in their interest to do so. And the more influence we exert on one another the more likely we are to become collectively dummer. A very good argument for encouraging independent thinkers and nay sayers.

The first half, or so, of the book is theory (sounds dry, but it's really quite fascinating) followed by some case studies. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

The Yang to the Yin of 'The Cult of the Amateur'.

In a way, it's difficult for me to render any sort of judgment on "The Wisdom of Crowds." I don't know a lot about economics; I made the mistake of majoring in the humanities. Heck, I think I'm the only person on the planet who hasn't read "Freakonomics." Still, I don't think "The Wisdom of Crowds" is about economics per se. Rather, it wants to encourage its readership to take a good, hard look at its assumptions about group dynamics and intelligence. Surowiecki posits that groups, if they are balanced, independent, and have a reliable method of aggregating their opinions, can often make better decisions than any of their members. What he's really fighting, though, two cultural cults: that of the individual and that of the technocratic expert. He's taking issue with the old saw that a committee is an organism with twelve legs and no brains. I could go on, but you get the picture. In this I think he succeeds.

In a roundabout way, Surowiecki is also making an argument for the efficiency of markets and the advantages of personal choice. He does this without going the full Friedman, which should make his arguments more palatable to those who know him from his columns for the New Yorker, who – let's be honest – may be more willing to examine markets' failures than their successes. Surowiecki's takes time to discuss dangers like panics and bubbles, but remains steadfast in his belief that a group of people bringing their own perspectives to a problem may be better equipped to find a solution than any one individual. From another perspective, what Surowiecki is doing in "The Wisdom of Crowds" is urging humility: if none of us can know everything all the time, the next best thing is for all of us to contribute a little to a group-oriented solution. This book is, pun intended, recommended to everyone. ( )

An excellent read. Surowiecki shows how the masses are sometimes smarter than the smartest person when working together to solve problems. ( )

It's difficult to read anything written on the topic of collaboration and community in the past few years without coming across references to James Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds"--and for good reason. The book, as he writes in his acknowledgments, "is partly about the difference between a society and just a bunch of people living next to each other" (p. 274)--a concept at the heart of all successful collaboration. His observations in his introduction lead us through a brief survey of those who have disparaged the ability of groups (crowds) to produce any signs of intelligent decision-making--Charles Mackay ("Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"), Gustave le Bon ("The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind"), and others--then guide us to his well documented premise: "…under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them" (p. xiii). The result is an entertaining, engaging, and convincing argument for collaboration involving people from exactly the same kind of widely diverse backgrounds that Frans Johansson promotes in "The Medici Effect," and leaves us little room to doubt the power, efficacy, and attractiveness of what collaboration can produce. ( )