James Surowiecki – författare

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. With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, 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.From the Trade Paperback edition.

A year ago it would have been difficult to conceive of an anthology of stories soley devoted to corporate malfeasance. Today, the challenge has been to keep it confined to one volume. From P.J. O’Rourke’s hilarious “How To Stuff A Wild Enron,” in which he compares trying to understand Enron’s finances to trying to buy an airline ticket at the best price, to Marc Peyser’s’s perceptive look at that American institution, Martha Stewart, to Joe Nocera’s investigation of how it all went wrong, the stories here are sometimes infuriating, often entertaining, and invariably informative. Best Business Crime Writing Of The Year is a report from the front lines of the war zone that has become American business today by some of our most talented and perceptive writers. Includes:• “The New Bull Market” by Michael Kinsley from Slate• “In Praise of Corporate Corruption Boom” by Michael Lewis from Bloomberg News• “HardBall” by David McClintick from Forbes• “The Accountants’ War” by Jane Mayer from the New Yorker• “Enron Debacle Highlights the Trouble With Stock Options” by Thomas Stewart from Business 2.0• “Investigating ImClone” by Alex Prud’homme from Vanity FairFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

In this landmark work, NEW YORKER columnist James Surowiecki explores a seemingly counter-intuitive idea that has profound implications. Decisions taken by a large group, even if the individuals within the group aren't smart, are always better than decisions made by small numbers of 'experts'. This seemingly simply notion has endless and major ramifications for how businesses operate, how knowledge is advanced, how economies are (or should be) organised and how nation-states fare. With great erudition, Surowiecki ranges across the disciplines of psychology, economics, statistics and history to show just how this principle operates in the real world. Along the way Surowiecki asks a number of intriguing questions about a subject few of us actually understand - economics. What are prices? How does money work? Why do we have corporations? Does advertising work? His answers, rendered in a delightfully clear prose, demystify daunting prospects. As Surowiecki writes: 'The hero of this book is, in a curious sense, an idea, a hero whose story ends up shedding dramatic new light on the landscapes of business, politics and society'.