This work offers a summary of the book “THE WISDOM OF CROWDS: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations” by James Surowiecki.
James Surowiecki is a staff writer and columnist at The New Yorker. He has also written articles that have been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Artforum, Wired and Slate.
Collective thinking always outperforms the individual brilliance even of highly skilled people. Large groups of people who think and act collectively always make better decisions, come up with better breakthroughs, solve difficult problems and predict the future better than any one individual can match.
This concept is counterintuitive because we live in an era when the expert is highly regarded. However, this line of thought is flawed. Instead of endlessly hunting for an expert that has all the answers, we should spend more time asking the crowd. According to Surowiecki, when you need an intelligent decision, find out what the crowd is saying because it is always more likely to come to a better decision.
The Wisdom of Crowds is an entertaining book that highlights the efficiency of teams. It will undoubtedly influence the way you take your decisions.
An internal decision market is where employees (drawn from different parts of the organization) set out different scenarios of what they think will happen in the future.
