James Surowiecki Quotes

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• Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

  James Surowiecki

  Smart, Thinking, Way

  "Digital Transformation - Part II: Collective Intelligence Is the Game Changer" by Rod Collins, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 4, 2017.

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• 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.

  James Surowiecki

  Dream, Procrastination, Self

  "Later" by James Surowiecki, www.newyorker.com. October 11, 2010.

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• Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.

  James Surowiecki

  Diversity, Decision, Independence

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.19, Anchor

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• 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.

  James Surowiecki

  Smart, Independent, Thinking

  "The Wise Way to Crowdsource a Manhunt". www.newyorker.com. April 23, 2013.

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• The paradox of Steve Jobs's career is that he had no interest in listening to consumers - he was famously dismissive of market research - yet nonetheless had an amazing sense of what consumers actually wanted.

  James Surowiecki

  Jobs, Careers, Listening

  "Apple: What Happens Now?". www.newyorker.com. August 24, 2011.

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• 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."

  James Surowiecki

  Hard Work, Intelligent, Skills

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• In conditions of uncertainty, humans, like other animals, herd together for protection.

  James Surowiecki

  Animal, Together, Protection

  "That Uncertain Feeling" by James Surowiecki, www.newyorker.com. September 1, 2008.

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• 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.

  James Surowiecki

  Wisdom, Smart, Mean

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.31, Anchor

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• Until the nineteen-seventies, Western countries paid little attention to corruption overseas, and bribery was seen as an unpleasant but necessary part of doing business there. In some European countries, businesses were even allowed to deduct bribes as an expense.

  James Surowiecki

  Country, Nineteen, Attention

  "Invisible Hand, Greased Palm" by James Surowiecki, www.newyorker.com. May 14, 2012.

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• I do think that procrastination evolved in humans for good reasons. If you're trying to stay alive as a human being on the savanna 20,000 years ago, worrying about what's right behind that bush is a lot more important than worrying about what might happen three weeks from now.

  James Surowiecki

  Procrastination, Thinking, Years

  "Ask the Author Live: James Surowiecki on Procrastination". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. October 1, 2010.

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• In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else.

  James Surowiecki

  News, World, Good News And Bad News

  "Don't Do the Math". www.newyorker.com. January 24, 2005.

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• The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.

  James Surowiecki

  Independent, Perspective, People

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.41, Anchor

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• Bubbles and crashes are textbook examples of collective decision making gone wrong. In a bubble, all of the conditions that make groups intelligent - independence, diversity, private judgement-disappear.

  James Surowiecki

  Intelligent, Diversity, Decision

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• Breaking tasks down into smaller sub-tasks can be very useful.

  James Surowiecki

  Tasks

  "Ask the Author Live: James Surowiecki on Procrastination". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. October 1, 2010.

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• The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable.

  James Surowiecki

  Important, Groupthink, Dissent

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.37, Anchor

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• Self-dealing, essentially, occurs when managers run companies to line their own pockets instead of those of the companies' owners. It's been a perennial problem in American capitalism and became a real dilemma when America moved toward a model in which corporations would be run by professional managers who had only small ownership stakes.

  James Surowiecki

  Running, Real, Self

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• Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead…the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

  James Surowiecki

  Smart, Thinking, Intelligent

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• Older people do a better job of managing their impulses, and so they're better able to put off putting off.

  James Surowiecki

  Jobs, People, Able

  "Ask the Author Live: James Surowiecki on Procrastination". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. October 1, 2010.

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• The challenge for capitalism is that the things that breed trust also breed the environment for fraud.

  James Surowiecki

  Challenges, Environment, American Capitalism

  "The crowd is smarter than you think". Interview with Todd Leopold, www.cnn.com. July 14, 2004.

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• The reason advertising is governed by fear, after all, is that most agencies rely on just a few clients to bring in the lion's share of their revenues.

  James Surowiecki

  Agency, Lions, Clients

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• In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy.

  James Surowiecki

  Country, Heart, Done

  "State of the Unions". www.newyorker.com. January 17, 2011.

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• A long-term crisis, after a certain point, no longer seems like a crisis. It seems like the way things are.

  James Surowiecki

  Long, Way, Certain

  "No End in Sight". www.newyorker.com. April 30, 2012.

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• Although oil is a commodity, it's still not a commodity like coffee, which, thank God, we will have with us always. At some point the oil will run out.

  James Surowiecki

  Running, Coffee, Oil

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• The value of a currency is, ultimately, what someone will give you for it - whether in food, fuel, assets, or labor. And that's always and everywhere a subjective decision.

  James Surowiecki

  Giving, Decision, Fuel

  "Why Gold?". www.newyorker.com. November 29, 2004.

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• The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber.

  James Surowiecki

  Independent, Long, People

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.41, Anchor

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