The fundamental problem with banks is what it's always been: they're in the business of banking, and banking, whether plain vanilla or… — 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
Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Discussions of health care in the U.S. usually focus on insurance companies, but, whatever their problems, they're not the main driver of… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
The problem with venality in business is that getting outraged about it makes it easy to miss the systemic problems that venality… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
One of the problems that exacerbates procrastination is the feeling that you have lots of different things to do and no clear… — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
Self-dealing, essentially, occurs when managers run companies to line their own pockets instead of those of the companies' owners. It's been a… — 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 Image
Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else. — James Surowiecki Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
