Marketing Papers
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
September 2006
Abstract
When financial columnist James Surowiecki wrote The Wisdom of Crowds, he wished to explain the successes and failures of markets (an example of a "crowd") and to understand why the average opinion of a crowd is frequently more accurate than the opinions of most of its individual members. In this expanded review of the book, Scott Armstrong asks a question of immediate relevance to forecasters: Are the traditional face-to-face meetings an effective way to elicit forecasts from forecast crowds (i.e. teams)? Armstrong doesn’t believe so. Quite the contrary, he explains why he considers face-to-face meetings a detriment to good forecasting practice, and he proposes several alternatives that have been tried successfully.
Date Posted: 22 May 2007
Comments
Reprinted from The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, Issue 5, Fall 2006, pages 3-15.
Publisher URL: http://ideas.repec.org/s/for/ijafaa.html