The Wisdom of Crowds highlights the immense knowledge and problem-solving potential of aggregated individuals. Surowiecki supports his argument with a series of historic and current real-world examples that illustrate how, under the correct circumstances, crowds are just as smart, if not smarter, than the smartest people in them. Surowiecki provides insight into some of the most relevant and exciting applications of crowd knowledge, such as Google's search engine and NASA disaster exploration. He outlines the characteristics necessary for a crowd to be wise, and offers business leaders suggestions for building crowd-sourced decision-making their own organizations.