James Surowiecki Quotes About Decisions

Quotes about: Decisions

• Auto repair, piloting, skiing, perhaps even management: these are skills that yield to application, hard work, and native talent. But forecasting an uncertain future and deciding the best course of action in the face of that future are much less likely to do so. And much of what we've seen so far suggests that a large group of diverse individuals will come up with better and more robust forecasts and make more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled "decision maker."

  James Surowiecki

  Hard Work, Intelligent, Skills

• Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.

  James Surowiecki

  Diversity, Decision, Independence

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.19, Anchor

• Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead…the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

  James Surowiecki

  Smart, Thinking, Intelligent

• Bubbles and crashes are textbook examples of collective decision making gone wrong. In a bubble, all of the conditions that make groups intelligent - independence, diversity, private judgement-disappear.

  James Surowiecki

  Intelligent, Diversity, Decision

• The fact that cognitive diversity matters does not mean that if you assemble a group of diverse but thoroughly uninformed people, their collective wisdom will be smarter than an expert's. But if you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you're better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are.

  James Surowiecki

  Wisdom, Smart, Mean

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.31, Anchor

• One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.

  James Surowiecki

  Successful, Keys, People

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.65, Anchor

• In part because individual judgement is not accurate enough or consistent enough, cognitive diversity is essential to good decision making.

  James Surowiecki

  Diversity, Decision, Judgement

• 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 seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.

  James Surowiecki

  Writing, Thinking, People

• 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 that business? Because bribery encourages people to make decisions based on the wrong criteria, which means in the business world that it distorts the efficient allocation of resources.

  James Surowiecki

  Mean, People, Decision

• The value of a currency is, ultimately, what someone will give you for it - whether in food, fuel, assets, or labor. And that's always and everywhere a subjective decision.

  James Surowiecki

  Giving, Decision, Fuel

  "Why Gold?". www.newyorker.com. November 29, 2004.

• No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.

  James Surowiecki

  Giving, Decision, Mind

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.220, Anchor

• If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom.

  James Surowiecki

  Wisdom, Team, Organization

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.190, Anchor

• All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners.

  James Surowiecki

  Government, People, Decision

  "The Risk Society" by James Surowiecki, www.newyorker.com. November 15, 2004.

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