One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The problem is that groups are only smart when the people in them are as independent as possible. This is the paradox… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Bubbles and crashes are textbook examples of collective decision making gone wrong. In a bubble, all of the conditions that make groups… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The fact that cognitive diversity matters does not mean that if you assemble a group of diverse but thoroughly uninformed people, their… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Auto repair, piloting, skiing, perhaps even management: these are skills that yield to application, hard work, and native talent. But forecasting an… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
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… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy. — James Surowiecki Copy Share
In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else. — James Surowiecki Copy Share
You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least if you… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
Corporations hope that the right concept will turn things around overnight. This is what you might call the crash-diet approach: starve yourself for a… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
Instead of mindlessly tossing billions at or taking billions from the Net as such, investors should be spending their time making sure that it's… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
If you thought the advent of the Internet, the spread of cheap and efficient information technology, and the growing fragmentation of the consumer market… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
The financial crisis of 2008 was not caused by investment banks betting against the housing market in 2007. It was caused by the fact… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
A consumer-finance agency is a good thing, but it would do well to teach consumers a simple lesson: if you don't understand the deal… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
What corporations fear is the phenomenon now known, rather inelegantly, as 'commoditization.' What the term means is simply the conversion of the market for… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
Unfortunately, there is something of a flaw in this idealized picture of the way the scientific community discovers truth. And the flaw is that… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
Markets work best when there's lots of information available and a historical track record to go on; they excel at predicting things like horse… — James Surowiecki Copy Share
The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization's benefits. — James Surowiecki Copy Share
