Post on 16-Nov-2014
description
My favorite Wisdom of Crowdsquotes
Mixed by Maarten Cannaerts
Images: www.sxc.hu– “The wisdom of crowds” was written
by James Surowiecki
Groups do not have to be dominated by exceptionally
intelligent people in order to be smart
Madness is the exception in
individuals but the rule in groups
(F. Nietsche)
The best collective decisions are the product of
disagreement and contest
not consensus or compromise.
There are four conditions that characterize wise crowds…
(each person should have some private information, even
if it’s just an eccentric
interpretation of the known facts)
1. Diversity of opinion
2. Independence
(people’s opinions are not
determined by the opinions
of those around them)
3. Decentralization
(people are able to
specialize and draw on
local knowledge)
4. Aggregation
(some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision)
Companies have been surprisingly unwilling to improve their decision making by tapping into the
collective wisdom of their employees.
What makes a system successful is its
ability to recognize losers and kill them quickly
It is better for reputation
to fail conventionally than to succeed
unconventionally.
Invention is an individual enterprise,
but selecting among inventions
is a collective one.
Encouraging people to make
incorrect guesses makes the group as a whole smarter.
One key to successful group decisions is getting
people to pay much less attention
to what everyone
else is saying.
Paying taxes is individually costly but collectively beneficial.
Today’s complex problem solving requires multiple
perspectives
The days of Leonardo da Vinci are
over.
(E. Wenger)
Confirmation bias causes decision makers to unconsciously seek those bits of information that confirm their underlying intuitions.
Endless layers of management
can make people less willing to
take
responsibility
for their own work
[There is a] correlation between upward mobility and not telling the boss about things that had gone wrong.
Certain kinds of information can make
things worse – not all information is created equal.