The book does cover a lot of ground in not very much space, and the pace of the argument is at times too fast. But the throughline of the argument is almost always clear, and the stories Surowiecki tells are often memorable. The chapter on NASA's mismanagement of the Columbia mission and the tale of how a man named John Craven relied on collective wisdom to find a lost submarine are especially striking.

This is one of those books that I expect people will still be talking about and referring to years or even decades from now. It's also a book that I hope will have a concrete impact on the way that people make decisions, since the implications of Surowiecki's argument are radical in the best way.


Wisdom of Crowds overstates the positive   June 4, 2004
 25 out of 29 found this review helpful

The book is interesting, well written, and covers much of the recent research on collective or group decision making, but it has glaring oversights. The author is most at home in economics where the book does the best at reporting research findings, but his references to social conformity are very limited despite that being at the core of the book. He completely overlooks research on the nonconscious dimension of decision making and implicit or automatic learning (at the basis of stereotypes and racial prejudice), and he neglects negative findings that groups may not outperform the best individuals in problem solving. From a reading of the book alone, one would never expect to see something like racial discrimination, the Holocaust, or the Taliban emerge in a society. Although the title refers to "societies and nations", the book only concerns the United States. Toward the end of the book, his accounts of the academic review process, the progress of science, and voting theories are naive at best. The book has no index.


Utter B.S.   May 29, 2004
 24 out of 87 found this review helpful

The idea that the masses make more good decisions than the minority in areas such as finance, especially the stock market, is so ludicrous that it does not deserve comment. Has Surowiecki ever heard of Vilfred Pareto and his 80/20 principle, also called the Vital Few vs. the Trivial Many?


Can I please give negative stars?   December 17, 2004
 22 out of 41 found this review helpful

This book has actually made me so angry in reading it that I'm having trouble writing a fair assessment of it. The authors developments for the "wisdom of crowds" was judged by the fact that if you average people's guesses at the numbers of marbles in a jar, it comes to be rather close; fine for guessing marbles in a jar, but real world applications of this type of thinking is flawed and arguments for it are left wanting. A good half the arguments he develops in the book are about the stupidity of crowds; leaving me wondering why I even bothered with his trite analysis of "funny and amusing sociological data" The author's world is a sterile and joyless place where the reality of his ideas are about as exciting as this read. The last time I checked "crowds" haven't written any great books, created any symphonies or inspired me to any level like an individual could.


Engaging   July 3, 2004
 19 out of 25 found this review helpful

Even after having read it, I'm still not sure what category I'd put THE WISDOM OF CROWDS in. It offers important insights into business, and helped me understand the way markets work. But it also has lots of fantastic and entertaining material about group psychology, and it's an interesting look at a host of questions about everyday life, ranging from the way crowds on a sidewalk move to traffic to the role of trust.

The book's real strength is its ability to take a complex question -- when are people in groups smart, and when are they foolish? -- and make it accessible and engaging, even to those of us without much background in the field. Surowiecki has a light touch with his ideas, and for me the book flew by (with the exception of a few pages about the NFL, which I had a hard time with). I feel as if I see the world now in a different way.