The Wisdom of Crowds

Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (Random House Large Print)

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James Surowiecki: The Wisdom of Crowds (2004, Random House Large Print)

640 pages

English language

Published May 25, 2004 by Random House Large Print.

ISBN:
978-0-375-43362-7
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OCLC Number:
54023909

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3 stars (3 reviews)

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant — better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.

The story is told of the first observations of this effect, through to anecdotes of the effect in modern economics and psychology. The book not heavy on statistics, and has prompted much research since its publication.

The title is an allusion to the famous phrase, the "madness of crowds".

10 editions