JSJames Surowiecki

28 collected words

James Surowiecki

Dates not recorded

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination, and many studies suggest that procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that of course creates a vicious cycle.

James Surowiecki / quote

02Undated

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 / quote

03Undated

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

James Surowiecki / quote

04Undated

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 / quote

05Undated

Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of the wrong, that keeps the group wise.

James Surowiecki / quote

06Undated

If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.

James Surowiecki / quote

07Undated

Capitalism, after all, is no fun when real failure becomes a possibility.

James Surowiecki / quote

08Undated

Solyndra's failure isn't a reason for the government to give up on alternative energy, any more than the failure of Pets.com during the Internet bubble means that venture capital should steer clear of tech projects.

James Surowiecki / quote

09Undated

The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.

James Surowiecki / quote

10Undated

Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What's now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don't.

James Surowiecki / quote

11Undated

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle.

James Surowiecki / quote

12Undated

Punk rock has never really had much patience with musical virtuosity. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say that for most of its history, punk has been actively hostile to virtuosity.

James Surowiecki / quote

13Undated

The paradox of Steve Jobs's career is that he had no interest in listening to consumers - he was famously dismissive of market research - yet nonetheless had an amazing sense of what consumers actually wanted.

James Surowiecki / quote

14Undated

If you work for Google or Apple, stock options give you a chance to share in the increasing value of the company. In the N.F.L., nothing like this happens; the players, though rich, are just working stiffs like the rest of us.

James Surowiecki / quote

15Undated

The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for less than a million dollars.

James Surowiecki / quote

16Undated

On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true.

James Surowiecki / quote

17Undated

Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars or sneakers, the consumer is going to the product.

James Surowiecki / quote

18Undated

Linux is a complex example of the wisdom of crowds. It's a good example in the sense that it shows you can set people to work in a decentralized way - that is, without anyone really directing their efforts in a particular direction - and still trust that they're going to come up with good answers.

James Surowiecki / quote

19Undated

The challenge for capitalism is that the things that breed trust also breed the environment for fraud.

James Surowiecki / quote

20Undated

Unlike most government programs, Social Security and, in part, Medicare are funded by payroll taxes dedicated specifically to them. Some of the tax revenue pays for current benefits; anything that's left over goes into trust funds for the future. The programs were designed this way for political reasons.

James Surowiecki / quote

21Undated

In order to work well, markets need a basic level of trust.

James Surowiecki / quote

22Undated

Speculators get a bad rap. In the popular imagination they're greedy, heedless, and amoral, adept at price manipulations and dirty tricks. In reality, they often play a key role in making markets run smoothly.

James Surowiecki / quote

23Undated

Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.

James Surowiecki / quote

24Undated

Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting.

James Surowiecki / quote