The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations

James Surowiecki is an American finance journalist who has written primarily for The New Yorker. He has also written articles for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, MIT Technology Review, and other publications. He was an editor for global business magazine Fortune. His expertise lies in the fields of business and finance, but he is most known for his broad, innovative, and cross-disciplinary perspective.

Surowiecki is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Bill and later studied briefly at Yale University under the Mellon Fellowship. His interest in finance has always intersected with his fascination for understanding human behavior. This has led him to research the topic of crowd decision in depth, leading to the publication of The Wisdom of Crowds in 2004.

John Craven (1924-2015) was a US Navy officer and scientist who applied systems analysis and probability theory to naval problems. He is best known in the book for leading the effort to locate the missing submarine Scorpion in 1968. Craven gathered a diverse team of experts, asked each to estimate where the submarine might be, and then aggregated their guesses. The averaged prediction proved astonishingly accurate, as the wreck was located within a few hundred yards.