The Wisdom of Crowds
Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
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Narrated by:
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Erik Singer
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By:
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James Surowiecki
About this listen
In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.
This seemingly counterintuitive notion has endless and major ramifications for how businesses operate, how knowledge is advanced, how economies are (or should be) organized and how we live our daily lives. With seemingly boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, economic behaviorism, artificial intelligence, military history, and political theory to show just how this principle operates in the real world.
Despite the sophistication of his arguments, Surowiecki presents them in a wonderfully entertaining manner. The examples he uses are all down-to-earth, surprising, and fun to ponder. Why is the line in which you're standing always the longest? Why is it that you can buy a screw anywhere in the world and it will fit a bolt bought ten-thousand miles away? Why is network television so awful? If you had to meet someone in Paris on a specific day but had no way of contacting them, when and where would you meet? Why are there traffic jams? What's the best way to win money on a game show? Why, when you walk into a convenience store at 2:00 A.M. to buy a quart of orange juice, is it there waiting for you? What do Hollywood mafia movies have to teach us about why corporations exist?
The Wisdom of Crowds is a brilliant but accessible biography of an idea, one with important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, conduct our business, and think about our world.
©2004 James Surowiecki (P)2004 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Editorial reviews
Why We Think It's Essential: James Surowiecki offers an interesting theory: that answers to difficult questions are best reached by a group of alert, intelligent individuals rather than by single, even respected, experts alone. The author highlights tragedies that could have been avoided had a greater number of persons been consulted before crucial decisions were made. Veteran narrator Grover Gardner does a fine job engaging the listener with Surowiecki's extended case studies. --Corey Thrasher
Critic reviews
"Surowiecki's style is pleasantly informal, a tactical disguise for what might otherwise be rather dense material. He offers a great introduction to applied behavioral economics and game theory." (Publishers Weekly)
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The Money Formula takes you inside the engine room of the global economy to explore the little-understood world of quantitative finance, and show how the future of our economy rests on the backs of this all-but-impenetrable industry. Written not from a post-crisis perspective - but from a preventative point of view - this book traces the development of financial derivatives from bonds to credit default swaps, and shows how mathematical formulas went beyond pricing to expand their use to the point where they dwarfed the real economy.
By: Paul Wilmott, and others
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The Click Moment
- Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World
- By: Frans Johansson
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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On the one hand we aren’t surprised by the uncertainty of everyday life, but on the other we believe that success can be analyzed and planned for. It is a revealing paradox. The implications are explosive and they obliterate every common-sense notion we have about strategy and planning. The Click Moment is about two very simple but highly provocative ideas.
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Outstanding book!
- By Anilyn Karel on 08-26-24
By: Frans Johansson
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Success and Luck
- Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
- By: Robert H. Frank
- Narrated by: Robert H. Frank
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine.
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Not what is advertised
- By Andre on 04-18-17
By: Robert H. Frank
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Machine, Platform, Crowd
- Harnessing Our Digital Future
- By: Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Second Machine Age, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson predicted some of the far-reaching effects of digital technologies on our lives and businesses. Now they’ve written a guide to help listeners make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.
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Both How AND Why for Techies
- By Dan Collins on 08-11-17
By: Erik Brynjolfsson, and others
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Perfect Bet
- How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck out of Gambling
- By: Adam Kucharski
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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From the simple to the intricate and the audacious to the absurd, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science and explains why gambling continues to generate insights into luck and decision making today. Covering exploits and ideas from across the globe, he meets the teams behind hedge funds that capitalize on inaccurate sports betting odds and explains how PhD-level pundits are using methods originally developed for the US nuclear program to predict sports results.
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Nontechnical, wandering far beyond "gaming"
- By Philo on 04-02-16
By: Adam Kucharski
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Good to Great
- Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't
- By: Jim Collins
- Narrated by: Jim Collins
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Built To Last, the defining management study of the 90s, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. But what about companies that are not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
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Good info, over-the-top narration
- By Anaxamaxan on 08-31-10
By: Jim Collins
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Adapt
- Why Success Always Starts with Failure
- By: Tim Harford
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In this groundbreaking work, Tim Harford shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. Harford argues that today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinions; the world has become far too unpredictable and profoundly complex. Instead, we must adapt. Deftly weaving together psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, physics, and economics, along with compelling stories of hard-won lessons learned in the field, Harford makes a passionate case for the importance of adaptive trial-and-error....
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Hidden Agenda
- By Lawrence on 05-20-13
By: Tim Harford
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Forecast
- What Physics, Meteorology, and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us About Economics
- By: Mark Buchanan
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Picture an early scene from The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy hurries home as a tornado gathers in what was once a clear Kansas sky. Hurriedly, she seeks shelter in the storm cellar under the house, but, finding it locked, takes cover in her bedroom. We all know how that works out for her.Many investors these days are a bit like Dorothy, putting their faith in something as solid and trustworthy as a house (or, say, real estate). But market disruptions - storms - seem to arrive without warning, leaving us little time to react.
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Good Contrarian Book
- By J. Sterz on 04-18-17
By: Mark Buchanan
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The Myth of the Rational Market
- A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street
- By: Justin Fox
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today.
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Probably most interesting to economists
- By D. Martin on 06-29-12
By: Justin Fox
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More Than You Know
- Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places
- By: Michael J. Mauboussin
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its first publication, Michael J. Mauboussin's popular guide to wise investing has been translated into eight languages and has been named best business book by BusinessWeek and best economics book by Strategy+Business. Now updated to reflect current research and expanded to include new chapters on investment philosophy, psychology, and strategy and science as they pertain to money management.
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Liked it better when it was written by Taleb
- By Ian on 11-24-18
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The Undercover Economist
- By: Tim Harford
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Author of the extremely popular "Dear Economist" column in Financial Times, Tim Harford reveals the economics behind everyday phenomena in this highly entertaining and informative book. Can a book about economics be fun to read? It can when Harford takes the reins, using his trademark wit to explain why it costs an arm and a leg to buy a cappuccino and why it's nearly impossible to purchase a decent used car.
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Everyone needs to know this.
- By Paul Norwood on 04-24-06
By: Tim Harford
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The Language of Trust
- By: Michael Maslansky
- Narrated by: Michael Maslansky
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Still struggling through the financial crisis that began in 2008, consumers aren't buying traditional sales approaches anymore. So how do salespeople, corporate communicators, managers, and marketers sell their ideas, products, and services to a generation of customers who are more skeptical and less influenced by conventional marketing than ever before?
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Are you communicating or just talking?
- By Shawn on 11-08-10
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Originals
- How Non-Conformists Move the World
- By: Adam Grant, Sheryl Sandberg - foreword
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Susan Denaker
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
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Interesting, but not science
- By Lloyd Fassett on 03-14-16
By: Adam Grant, and others
What listeners say about The Wisdom of Crowds
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Anonymous User
- 11-19-08
Good topic but weakly presented
The topic is excellent and I was interested in it to try to get some insight into what drives web based social networking and wikipedia style systems. The idea that having more people solving a problem (providing that they work together) is better than any individual is solid.
However that's really as far as the book gets. There are a huge number of examples and the author has clearly spent a lot of time reading up. However, sometimes the point of quite lengthy anecdotes is either weakly made, or actually illustrates points counter to the author's intent that are not explored.
The language makes use of "can", "may" and "should" liberally rather than "is", "does" and "will". This comes across as an attempt to mitigate against counter examples by suggesting a trend rather than a rule. This makes me think that the title would be better "The wisdom of some crowds some of the time".
As a previous reviewer said, the basic premise is explained at the start and the stream of examples fails to add much, in some cases actually making you rethink some of the author's statements.
In my estimation it does not try to credit or explain anomalies like warren buffet or steve jobs. But maybe I'm wrong.
I give it three stars for having a good topic and for the time it must have taken researching the examples.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Wade T. Brooks
- 06-25-12
Non-intuitive insightful stuff, certainly worth it
Non-intuitive insightful stuff - certainly worth reading. A good case is made for why diverse groups in knowledge, expertise and experience, etc. perform better than homogeneous group, even a group of experts, in making predictions and finding solutions. The types of problems that can be addressed by groups (cognition, coordination, and cooperation) and the best framework for accurate results.
Practical examples from historical problems including the space shuttle accident, 9/11 intelligence gathering, finding a lost US Navy sub filled with nuclear warheads, stock market bubbles and crashes, etc.
Some useful information on why and how prediction markets works.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-16-23
The first half was awesome, the second lost...
...it's way. I think the last half wandered too much into the weeds of behavioral economics ,politics & elections and away from the core topic.
While I'm quite familiar with, & interested in behavioral economics, those topics weren't well associated with the the core topic.
They felt like distractions that could have, but didn't support greater understandimg of the wisdom of crowds as it relates to those topics.
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Overall
- Hamad
- 08-12-04
great discourse on group dynamics....
i liked this book and to be honest (as i "read" this in audible format) i kept drifting from time to time so i will definitely go through it again.
surowiecki makes the point - in short - that diverse groups of people (crowds), regardless of how uninformed they are, are the best way to get the best answers and make the wisest decisions.
the book contains a ton of anecdotes and examples (and i got the abridged edition too!) like the fact that 40% of americans polled during the height of the cold war thought the Soviet Union was a member of NATO but then goes on to prove that this is immaterial in the larger scheme of things.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- D
- 10-03-05
One interesting idea, but this book lacks wisdom
I kept hoping after hours of listening I there would be a pay off. No luck. the most interesting finding, that certain crowds, if they are diverse enough are wiser, than their wisest member, is revealed at the beginning. Many anecdotes, and little wisdow, in fact a suprising level of ignorance about capitalism and people, fill the following ten hours. Well narrated.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Jason
- 05-26-10
Good
The book and the details are very good the only issue I had was it rambles on and gets a little repetitive but better then many books out there.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- hspskm
- 05-26-07
Interesting
Great read
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1 person found this helpful