QUOTES by James Surowiecki
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least if you value your time and money.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Disasters redistribute money from taxpayers to construction workers, from insurance companies to homeowners, and even from those who once lived in the destroyed city to those who replace them. It's remarkable that this redistribution can happen so smoothly and quickly, with devastated regions reinventing themselves in a matter of months.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
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.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn't make people happy.
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The U.S. is excellent at importing cheap products from the rest of the world. Let's try importing some human capital instead.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
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.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Campaigns fail if they waste resources courting voters who are unpersuadable or already persuaded. Their most urgent task is to find and persuade the few voters who are genuinely undecided and the larger number who are favorably disposed but need a push to actually vote.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Steve Jobs was rare: a C.E.O. who actually had a huge impact on his company's fortunes. Contrary to corporate mythology, most C.E.O.s could be easily replaced, if not by your average Joe, then by your average executive vice-president. But Jobs genuinely earned the label of superstar.
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On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Congressional Republicans themselves have vehemently defended the idea that preexisting conditions should not be used to deny people insurance.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
We assume that good-looking people are smarter and more effective than they really are, and that homely people are the reverse.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Of course, looking tough on inflation is part of any central banker's job description: if investors believe that inflation is going to get out of control, you end up with higher interest rates and capital flight, and a vicious circle quickly ensues.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
In some respects, the video-game business is a lot like the razor business, which follows a simple model: Give away the razor, gouge 'em on the price of the blades.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
A general principle of good taxation is that similar jobs, and similar kinds of compensation, should be taxed the same way: otherwise, the government is effectively subsidizing some jobs over others.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
To be sure, if you watch CNBC all day long you'll pick up some interesting news about particular companies and the economy as a whole. Unfortunately, to get to the useful information, you have to wade through reams of useless stuff, with little guidance on how to distinguish between the two.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
In conditions of uncertainty, humans, like other animals, herd together for protection.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude to the author's own problems with finishing the piece.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
The fundamental problem with banks is what it's always been: they're in the business of banking, and banking, whether plain vanilla or incredibly sophisticated, is inherently risky.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Since the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wants to remain a part of Great Britain, and since Ireland itself has shown little interest in reunification, the IRA's prospects for success through political channels have always been limited.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Workers who come to the U.S. see their wages and their standard of living boosted sharply simply by crossing the border. That's a good thing, and one of the best arguments for immigration reform, even if you'll rarely hear a politician make it.
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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.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
It may be that the very qualities that help people get ahead are the ones that make them ill-suited for managing crises. It's hard to prepare for the worst when you think you're the best.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Tough times have always lent themselves to nativist sentiments and closed-door policies. But in the case of highly skilled immigrants, these policies are a recipe for stagnation.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.
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Of course, politicians always say they're just describing their opponents' positions, even if they are in fact offering absurd caricatures, if not outright lies.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Developing countries often have hypertrophied bureaucracies, requiring businesses to deal with enormous amounts of red tape.
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You might say that economic history is the history of people learning to manage risk.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
From a social point of view, it's beneficial that homeownership encourages commitment to a given town or city. But, from an economic point of view, it's good for people to be able to leave places where there's less work and move to places where there's more.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Standards wars involve lots of variables, and understanding them often seems more an art than a science. They generally involve just two big players, and end in a winner-take-all situation.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most part it's the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.
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Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them.
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The desire for reinvention seems to arise most often when companies hear the siren call of synergy and start to expand beyond their core businesses.
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The financial crisis of 2008 was not caused by investment banks betting against the housing market in 2007. It was caused by the fact that too few investors - including all of the big investment banks - bet too heavily on the housing market in the years before 2007.
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Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
In industries where a lot of competitors are selling the same product - mangoes, gasoline, DVD players - price is the easiest way to distinguish yourself. The hope is that if you cut prices enough you can increase your market share, and even your profits. But this works only if your competitors won't, or can't, follow suit.
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Flexible supply chains are great for multinationals and consumers. But they erode already thin profit margins in developing-world factories and foster a pell-mell work environment in which getting the order out the door is the only thing that matters.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
For a crowd to be smart, the people in it need to be not only diverse in their perspectives but also, relatively speaking, independent of each other. In other words, you need people to be thinking for themselves, rather than following the lead of those around them.
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If we want our regulators to do better, we have to embrace a simple idea: regulation isn't an obstacle to thriving free markets; it's a vital part of them.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
Most corporate name changes are the result of mergers and acquisitions. But these tend to be unimaginative.
Quote by -James Surowiecki
In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap.
Quote by -James Surowiecki