My favoriteWisdom of CrowdsquotesMixed byMaarten CannaertsImages: www.sxc.hu– “The wisdom of crowds” was writtenby 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 contestnot consensus or compromise.

There are four conditions that characterize wise crowds…

1. Diversity of opinion (each person should have some private information, even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts)

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.

Inventionis 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 responsibilityfor 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.