James Surowiecki Quotes

Surely in a world of email, video conferencing and virtual assistants, isn't being expected to show up at the office extremely anachronistic? Yet to date it seems that where one works does matter. That creativity and innovation do feed off physical interactions between people.

Learning and the exchange of ideas is dramatic.

I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.

I use doodling for a variety of reasons: I use it to get clarity around a concept, I use it to relax, I use it to communicate ideas with others and get their refinement of them, I use it to map complex systems for companies, I use it to run innovation games for business, I use it to get insight on something puzzling me.

Any institution faces two basic choices if they hope to spark new ideas. One is to leverage the brains trust within their organization by creating a special event dedicated to new thinking. The other is to look outside themselves to stimulate solutions.

It's good to talk to people and get ideas.

I'm one of those women who likes to chat and share knowledge and pass it around.

The best remote companies I've seen do almost everything online, via email and telephone. But they also get together face to face on a regular basis.

Learning in a face-to-face human community, as humans have evolved to do over hundreds of thousands of years, may always be the ideal - especially in an endeavor that is as relationship-driven as business.

Key is the question of where do new ideas come from. Historically, four places: government labs, big corporations, startup companies, and research universities.

The natives of Silicon Valley learned long ago that when you share your knowledge with someone else, one plus one usually equals three. You both learn each other's ideas, and you come up with new ones.

I believe in the power of ideas. I believe in the power of sharing knowledge.

The surprising question we get is, 'How many people telecommute at Google?' And our answer is, 'As few as possible.'

Distributed workforces are most likely to succeed if their culture is one that values and prioritizes face-to-face communications.

I'm always talking to people. It's not that complicated. I just find somebody and say, "Do you have any ideas." If they do, we just start thinking things around.

I work from home a lot. I think I get as much work done at the office as at home, and I'm used to working with people who don't work in the office. I don't really care where they are, even if they're on a banana leaf somewhere. If they deliver their work, I am completely fine. I don't need someone sitting at their desk to produce.

As far as employees are concerned, clearly I like to communicate with them, since we are more than 40,000 people. I like to communicate either through e-mail or through video conferencing, which we do very often, and stream out videos and interviews. But more than that, I believe in traveling to my branches.

Television is, in many respects, a passive medium: people receive information without really exchanging ideas with others. By contrast, the Internet can be an active medium, allowing individuals to use e-mail, discussion groups, and even Web sites to engage with one another.

Networking is working.

It's really fun to work with new people who you've never met before.

People need meeting places. You need places where ideas get exchanged and you see each other's faces once in a while.

I think an office is just a microcosm of life and the different kinds of people that you will come across and interactions there, and I think if you all sit in a room together, then it gets a bit more intense and fun for people to watch, maybe.

I personally believe that a critical part to innovation is that exchange of ideas so when you say, 'Here's my idea,' someone else at the next table, who is in a different party, will go, 'Oh, these guys are trying that,' so that comes.

When you can't see someone all day long, the only thing you have to evaluate is the work. A lot of the petty evaluation stats just melt away.

Talk to people... everything good I've done has come from conversations with people. Science is a very social phenomenon.