All James Surowiecki Quotes
- Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking from a common… Behavioral
- Being out of a job can erode people's confidence and their sense of possibility; and employers, often unfairly, tend to take long-term unemployment as a… Confidence
- Being unemployed is even more disastrous for individuals than you'd expect. Aside from the obvious harm - poverty, difficulty paying off debts - it seems… Affect
- Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they're likely… Alert
- By the time of the '90s boom, CEOs had become superheroes, accorded celebrity treatment and followed with a kind of slavish scrutiny that Alfred P.… Accorded
- Campaigns fail if they waste resources courting voters who are unpersuadable or already persuaded. Their most urgent task is to find and persuade the few… Actually Vote
- Companies have long gathered data to break down their customer base into specific segments. Now political parties have become adept at micro-targeting, too, using data… Activities
- 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 few… Approach
- Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most… Capitalism
- Disasters redistribute money from taxpayers to construction workers, from insurance companies to homeowners, and even from those who once lived in the destroyed city to… Cities
- Discussions of health care in the U.S. usually focus on insurance companies, but, whatever their problems, they're not the main driver of health-care inflation: providers… Care
- Flexible supply chains are great for multinationals and consumers. But they erode already thin profit margins in developing-world factories and foster a pell-mell work environment… Chains
- 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… Crowd
- From a social point of view, it's beneficial that homeownership encourages commitment to a given town or city. But, from an economic point of view,… Able
- I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets… Business
- If someone really wants my company's business, why shouldn't he be able to do everything he can - including paying me off - to get… Able
- If we want our regulators to do better, we have to embrace a simple idea: regulation isn't an obstacle to thriving free markets; it's a… Better
- If you thought the advent of the Internet, the spread of cheap and efficient information technology, and the growing fragmentation of the consumer market were… Advent
- If you work for Google or Apple, stock options give you a chance to share in the increasing value of the company. In the N.F.L.,… Apple
- In a world where companies increasingly know about their business in real time, it makes no sense that public reporting mostly follows the old quarterly… Business
- In industries where a lot of competitors are selling the same product - mangoes, gasoline, DVD players - price is the easiest way to distinguish… Competitors
- In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing… Bringing
- In terms of productivity - that is, how much a worker produces in an hour - there's little difference between the U.S., France, and Germany.… America
- In the auto industry, there's one thing you can always count on: if a new environmental or safety rule is proposed, executives will prophesy disaster. Always Count
- In the days when corporate downsizing was all the rage, Wall Street took a lot of flak for judging companies too harshly and setting the… All