Article August 23, 2004 Issue

TEAMS: THE CASE FOR COLLECTIVE WISDOM

R.E.D.

The world is teeming with teams—sports, medical, political, financial, educational—you name it. And in his book The wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, and Nation (New York: Doubleday, 2004), James Surowiecki says the end is not in sight.

Surowiecki is a staff writer at The New magazine where he writes the business column. Reviewing the behavior of large groups of people, he finds that collectively and without consulting each other, individuals tend to reach uncannily accurate conclusions about investments and other matters. And the direction those decisions take has a broad influence.

Within a smaller sphere such as a business or government agency, where people interact face-to-face, Surowiecki says that the best teams include independent thinkers with diverse backgrounds and a mix of intellectual capacities, instead of only the brightest stars in the office. Homogeneous teams, or groups who know each other very well, tend to be less effective because there is more pressure to conform than to challenge each other.

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