What is wealth? How is it created? And how can we create more of it for the benefit of individuals, businesses, and societies? In The Origin of Wealth, Eric Beinhocker provides provocative new answers to these fundamental questions.

Beinhocker surveys the cutting-edge ideas of economists and scientists and brings their work alive for a broad audience. These researchers, he explains, are revolutionizing economics by showing how the economy is an evolutionary system, much like a biological system. It is economic evolution that creates wealth and has taken us from the Stone Age to the $36.5 trillion global economy of today.

By better understanding economic evolution, Beinhocker writes, we can better understand how to create more wealth. The author shows how complexity economics is turning conventional wisdom on its head in areas ranging from business strategy and organizational design to investment strategy and public policy. As sweeping in scope as its title, The Origin of Wealth will rewire our thinking about the workings of the global economy and where it is going.

Many people have complained that the book lacks focus in its discussion of complexity economics, but I disagree. In fact, I was surprised that Beinhocker was able to fit everything that needed to be said into a book under 500 pages (discounting the foot notes and bibliography).

He may have been arrogant in his discussion of Traditional (capital T) economics, and I felt that he did not have a comprehensive understanding of some of the non-economics related material, but overall it was a fascinating read.

My biggest disappointment was that it was written before the current economic turmoil. I would have loved to have read the complexity economists take on it!

I highly recommend it.

The author probably learnt a lot by writing this review of the complexity theory as it applies to microeconomics and strategic management. Not sure the reader will have the same experience.

If you already have read a little bit in this area this book is just too general and unfocused to sustain interest. If you haven't read anything then I guess the book is a fair overview but still long and unfocused.

The writing is okay, but not as smooth and interesting as some other pop-science writers. Sometimes the author comes across as an angry outsider who thinks he has all the answers (compare the pompous title!) and that doesn't make for a pleasant reading experience.

The provocative theory of this book, that economic theory is all wet and that economies evolve according to social and technological intervention, is presented well early in the book but then suffers from the presentation of too much information much of which does not appear relevant to the theory itself. Still, necessary reading for those interested in how and why the world works the way it does.

A must read for anyone trying to figure out the future of finance, economics and risk management.

Don't be put off by the lengthy critiques found here. You may get the feeling that these reviewers should be writing their own books. If they actually did so, I'd bet they would find that one can't cite every sentence, can't reference every economist who ever contributed to the field, can't explain every generalization at every opportunity. Ignore them and don't miss this great synthesis that pulls from many disciplines to form a wonderful construct that shows how economics is part and parcel of the main drivers of organic life - evolutionary processes.

Btw, Publisher's Weekly also blows their summary. Beinhocker does not use this synthesis as a "panacea." For we humans, his ideas are potentially a more accurate worldview, not a global cure for disease. Beinhocker writes with the aim that we might construct better approximations of reality using this line of thought. Worldviews are big, but that is not the same as a panacea that will cure all that ails you. This is a brilliant work that all thinking members of homo economicus should read.