Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess

by Michael Bhaskar

Curation, or the art of selecting useful information to form meaningful collections, is the new buzzword that tech companies and media professionals have eagerly latched on to. But curation is a far more powerful and deeply relevant idea than we give it credit for. It answers the question of how we make sense of a culture in which problems are often about having too much, and shows how we keep growing in a world of excess. Acts of selecting, refining and arranging to add value help us overcome information overload. This book highlights the numerous places in which this simple but forceful skill is increasingly felt: in art and on the Web, but also in retail and manufacturing, high finance and government policy.

CURATION is an exciting and wide-ranging work of business-oriented non-fiction incorporating the latest thinking in economics, technology, business strategy, complexity theory, media and psychology with strong narratives and big ideas. Through powerful personal stories about real jobs, lives, companies and industries fighting to thrive in crowded markets, it reveals how a little-used word from the world of museums became a crucial business strategy for the 21st century.

Curation is one of the most gripping and unignorable business ideas for our time, and organisations and individuals who make the most of it will position themselves to grow.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Curation, Design, Art, Personal Development, Communication

368 pages, Hardcover

First published June 2, 2016

About the author

Michael Bhaskar is a writer, researcher and digital publisher. He is Co-Founder of Canelo, a new publishing company, and Writer in Residence at DeepMind.

He has written and talked extensively about publishing, the future of media, the creative industries and the economics of technology.

He has worked as a digital publisher, an economics researcher, a book reviewer and founded several web initiatives.

Michael has a degree in English Literature from the University of Oxford where he won the University Gibbs Prize. He has been a British Council Young Creative Entrepreneur, a Frankfurt Book Fair Fellow and is currently a Visiting Researcher at the Oxford Brookes International Centre for Publishing and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Reviews

[Boy Blue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read but could have been half the length. Ironically a better curation of the material in the book would have made a better read. It is well written but the premise is pretty obvious from the start and some of the anecdotes are wearisome and many points are over worked. This is probably because there's not all that much to talk about. SUMMARY: As the amount of data we produce grows exponentially curation has become increasingly important, you can look cool and make money out of this phenomenon if you get the formula right, here are some examples.

[Danilo Weiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprei a edição do Sesc, meio com pé atrás já que os livros editados pelo Sesc muitas vezes tem cara de monografia, com muito rodapé, linguagem acadêmica, etc.

Qual não foi minha surpresa quando me deparei com um livro bem organizado, repletos de cases (uns mais e outros menos conhecidos) e uma estrutura que destrincha bem o tema central do livro - curadoria -, dando dicas para nos ajudar a navegar num mundo com excesso de dados e escolhas.

Partindo de uma perspectiva histórica, o autor começa explorando muito bem os problemas decorrentes dessa sobrecarga de informações, culminando com exemplos de curadoria da cultura, da internet, dos negócios e até uma provocação sobre a curadoria de si mesmo; como nossos gostos e escolhas muitas vezes servem para nos definir em relação aos outros. Nada mais atual.

[Nastya Khyzhniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really took my time reading this book, because I wanted to remember as much as possible. For me there is no specific type of reader for this book: though it touches sometimes complicated matters, the languages is really down to earth, Michael B also gives a lot of examples (using the companies well-known to the most) from completely different spheres of life.
The content is well-organized (well curated, I guess): from The Problem or how we got to the point of excess to The Answer or everything you need to know about the curation and then to The Reality - where we see curation nowadays.
It doesn't give you all the answers how to fight the excess, but it gives you the idea (and some instruments). Now I'm really curious what will happen next, what new and probably unusual forms it will take in a couple of years
The only thing I'm not quite in to is the Curate yourself part. Not sure that these choices add value or whether we can really add value to ourselves. Other than that, it's a great book and I really recommend to read it.

[Divija Rao · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is quite interesting on how the author talks about evolution of the word ‘curation’ and spins the the thread around multiple industries and tie them all together with a perspective on how curation is playing and will play an important role. I highly appreciate the intensive research that went into writing this book. While we understand the gist within couple of pages of reading this book, it is nice to know how it applies to various fields of industry and lifestyles.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

so many irrelevant digressions in an attempt to fill space - should have been an article!

[Einu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether you like the buzz around curation or not, it’s hard to deny that it has become a valuable tool to make sense of the world we live in. There is so much of everything now – music, clothing brands, novels, holiday destinations, financial information – that without curation we would be completely overwhelmed. The enormous quantity of options would drown out quality, and we would struggle to find what we’re interested in among the sea of possibilities. What we need, in other words, is better filters. This is what curation does, it’s about selecting (and thereby reducing), arranging ("making the most of what you have”), refining, simplifying and contextualising.

Good curation has a vision and direction:

It’s no good exhorting the world to less, if you don’t consider what that less should consist of. There is little point reducing if you aren’t also refining. Because curation is built around expert selection with concrete goals, curation ensures that reduction and refinement happen in lockstep.

Becoming a good curator, the author argues, takes hard work; there are no shortcuts. Good curators have spent years gathering experience and knowledge in their fields:

Their curation is based on judgements and instincts honed by tens of thousands of hours of learning and immersion. Good taste, one diffuse but central idea behind curated selections, is carefully cultivated.

The combination of vision and experience, with times, turns curators into trusted curators:

The best legacy organisations have spent decades or even centuries building and augmenting that vision. Which is why the Financial Times and Penguin, Gagosian and William Morris Entertainment are all gatekeepers that remain influential, profitable and relevant. For the new emerging gatekeepers, building credibility is the challenge – but they do, and that’s why we have things like Laughing Squid, Vox Media and Wattpad.

Good curation is also often a mix of machine-powered selection and human-powered curation. Relying on algorithms alone often creates a filter bubble, it confirms what you already knew you wanted. Good curation breaks through this by showing you something you didn’t know you wanted:

Without a blend and balance of different kinds of curation we will fall into self-reinforcing loops of taste and opinion. Rather than open up and explore the world, curation would close it down. One form of curation – let alone one curator – represents a totalitarian vision. A diversity of models and curators mitigates the risk. It opens rather than closes.

One way of diversifying and thereby improving curation is by increasing the number of curators:

Having a strategy for letting others curate, for outsourcing to those on the frontlines, will be more and more essential. It’s a model we have seen time and again on the web and it’s not going away. Social media relies on networks of trust, intimacy and knowledge, amplified by connectivity – given how much curation is about personality and connection, it’s hardly surprising this model is so prevalent.

According to the author, there is no manual for good curation. It depends on what you’re curating and who you’re curating for. But one thing all good curation shares is that it provides a service. In fact, I think the author is right that the reason many people dislike the word ‘curation’ is because it’s increasingly attributed to self-conscious activities like curating everything from your wardrobe to your Instagram feed. It trivialises the concept and threatens to make it irrelevant. But curation can be much more valuable:

When curation is built around a sense of what others want, imbued with a service ethic, when it cares about what it curates more than the curation itself, those charges are unfair – curation here is rightly valuable.

The key message of this book could be summarised in a few pages but I enjoyed it as a whole regardless because of the research that clearly went into it (although it got a tad too repetitive towards the end for me). The many examples and anecdotes throughout (including the curation strategies of platforms like the App Store, Netflix and NYT) do a good job illustrating what the author means by ‘good curation’, and they show how ubiquitous the practice is in our modern world, even if we often don’t notice. If you’re only theoretically interested in curation, this book will give you a good idea of what it is and what it is not. If you also have a practical interest, the various anecdotes together with the author's insights will undoubtedly give you new ideas for your own curatorial pursuits. Let me share three of my favourite insights to give you an idea:

1. We’re drawn to choice but it can paralyse us
An experiment in a supermarket showed that people are initially drawn to having lots of choice but that it ultimately leads to less sales:

consumers initially exposed to limited choices proved considerably more likely to purchase the produce than consumers who had initially encountered a much larger set of options… The more options you have, the more opportunity costs you have incurred, psychologically speaking. We don’t just experience regret after the event either – we anticipate regret. We ruin our own pleasure anticipating regret we might feel about other choices we could make! Which again impedes our ability to choose, inhibiting our desire to make a choice in the first place.

I think this is a big part of why modern Westerners are never content, but that’s a different story...

2. Too much information confuses us

More information, we assume, means we’re better prepared. Yet this isn’t true. After considering about ten parameters our ability to make decisions is impaired. We get confused and lose sight of our priorities. Even ten is a stretch and many psychologists argue anything beyond five is suboptimal. Saturated not just in choices but in information about choices – from the fuel efficiency of an engine to the size of the boot – we struggle to grasp what we want and why we want it.

3. Complexity makes systems more vulnerable

More complex societies are more costly to maintain than simpler ones, requiring greater support levels per capita. As societies increase in complexity, more networks are created among individuals, more hierarchical controls are created to regulate these networks, more information is processed, there is more centralization of information flow, there is increasing need to support specialists not directly involved in resource production, and the like. All of this complexity is dependent on energy flow.

When something happens to that energy flow, it can have far-reaching consequences, as it did in 2008:

Shocks that would usually be tough – like a dip in demand for Sunbelt real estate, the initial US trigger for the 2008 crisis – became critical. The system was too complex for the ‘quants’ and economics PhDs to predict or manage. As with the Mayans, a complex superstructure teetered on a base that couldn’t support it. Complexity, which had driven such outsized rewards for bankers and hedge-fund managers, turned into the enemy.

By now you probably see how curation can help:

The more complexity we encounter, the more simplification matters. By selecting and arranging, curation takes what is complex and while keeping the essential elements, makes the whole simpler. This is the balancing act of curation – to keep what is important and valuable about complexity, without the overwhelming, overleveraged and overloaded aspects of it.

[Ícaro de Brito Pereira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Li esse livro pulando várias partes porque eu queria saber sobre curadoria é como fazer isso de um jeito funcional, então só quis ler o que interessava a esse objetivo.

De resto esse livro parece aqueles “guias para o sucesso” na lógica neoliberal capitalista pra caralho. Fica tentando provar que o problema do excesso é maior do que é de verdade e que técnicas de curadoria são úteis para o mundo empresarial.

Daí tem um monte de “cases de sucesso” e muitos argumentos superficiais que poderiam ser facilmente desmentidos. Nossa, tem um excesso desses aqui.

Porém, mas partes em que fala de curadoria, tem uns insights bacanas. Então vale umas 3 estrelas.

[Jonathan Chambers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A broad survey of the development and application of curation, focusing on the principal of increased curation/reduction of choice as a pathway to increasing value. "Curation" is extremely readable and full of interesting factoids, tackling questions of pure human curation and the kinds of blended or purely algorithmic curation that are increasingly presenting the world to us in customised forms. I don't know if I actually advanced my knowledge about how to curate a great deal, but the book was well worth the read.

[sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

WHY. WHY is publishing making me read a book analysing ECONOMY. The only parts that I could read with some engagement was the history, so it gets an extra star.

I’m joking. I know exactly why (and I’m not happy about it), easily summed up by this: “The message for both small and big business is clear: follow value, find curation.”

But honestly I hope I never have to read the word ‘curation’ ever again.

[Rajesh CNB · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book to understand a new buzz word in the market. But I was a bit disappointed. What makes the book a good (though not interesting) read is the amount of examples that the author provides us with. However, the book has a long-winded approach and we have to struggle really to get to the point. The length could have been much shorter.

[Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a wide-ranging manifesto for curation and its growing importance. Bhaskar writes in an engaging and conversational manner, which helps to make a business book interesting to read.

The problem with this book is that it really needed curating itself. It's long and repetitive, and concepts which could be cleared up in a matter of sentences are allowed to spread over pages without adding much value. Although the book is divided into chapters and headings which make sense, the content of these chapters does tend to blur together. The chattier style allows ideas to flow without much differentiation, which means that there is not much order to what is being discussed.

The scope of the book is very wide, which probably contributed to these issues. I was fascinated to learn about the variety of places where curation takes place, but I think one or two in-depth studies would have worked better than cycling through so many industries so rapidly. It's a shame that Bhaskar did not spend more time on publishing, as he is an expert in this field. I believe his previous work 'Content Machine' is about the publishing process, but it would still have been interesting to bring some of this expertise into 'Curation'.

Finally, I have come away from the book unconvinced that there is much difference between choice and curation. While I was convinced that increasing output means we rely more on others to help us make selections, I feel that curation is just a new name for the same action which has been performed for some time now.

Although I've highlighted a lot of issues with this book, it is worth reading for a better understanding of how we're being affected by the rapid production of, well, everything.

[Jeremy Walton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picking & choosing
I picked this up in Fopps last year, interested in the idea of curation as helping control information overload (the back of the book notes that, "in the past two years, humanity has produced more data than the rest of human history combined"). The author defines curation on p7 as "selecting, refining and arranging to add value", and spends the rest of the book looking at how that is being applied in various areas. His survey is not limited to the proliferation of data on the internet, but starts with the basic problem which is shared by the majority in the (first) world: that of "stuffocation" - being oppressed by too many possessions - and a possible link to "affluenza" - anxiety resulting from the pursuit of more possessions. He produces some nice examples of efforts to deal with these issues, including a company which produces music playlists that are (apparently) tailored to clients' business, ambience and trading patterns; the idea being that background music is too important to be left to the radio, automatic playlist generators or (worst of all) employees playing their favourite CDs all the time.

I found the book interesting, and enjoyed reading it but wondered (as I often do with books of this kind) whether the story it tells could have been more usefully delivered in a magazine article; perhaps the winnowing of the author's material that would be required is a nice illustration of the book's title.

Originally reviewed 21 May 2018

[Akanksha G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curation (2016) by Michael Bhaskar has this premise: since before the industrial revolution, our world has been driven by the mantra of 'more is more'--more production, more choices, more of everything. Consequently, we've reached a point of overabundance. And now, value lies in the selection and arrangement of things than in their production. Bhaskar examines this across various domains including retail, food, art, and the internet. Since the book is pretty recent, it offers recent examples that are yet to be outdated (such as Netflix, Eataly, Saadiyat Island). These case studies are fun to read. There are also some pretty neat insights from behavioral science, such as more and more choices lead to greater cognitive load and decision fatigue, and how people are coming up with creative solutions to tackle that. Although, most of the solutions under discussion in this books are strategies adopted by various brands to distinguish themselves rather than the habits of regular people.
Still, the book drives home the fact that curation is becoming a more and more essential process in today's landscape and we can all benefit from being selective about what we keep around!

[Ferio · Rating 4 out of 5]

La curaduría, actividad proveniente del mundo del Arte e implantada en la actualidad como técnica de selección y creación de valor en Internet, se propone en este libro como salida al ruido y el exceso de oferta en la sociedad de la abundancia.

Abundantes son también los escenarios que el autor propone para justificar su propuesta, desde los mencionados hasta el mercado de lujo, la tecnología o la gastronomía. Quizá por ello y por el sesgo de elevada calidad de los negocios con los que ilustra el texto pudiera confundirse lo que dice con una proposición elitista; por eso hay que leer con detenimiento sus palabras, que ofrecen una salida a un escenario agobiante con el que aún estamos aprendiendo a convivir y que debería ser transitorio.

Ahora bien, un discurso tan recurrente aplicado a tantos sectores, de los cuales solo algunos serán de nuestro interés, puede llegar a aburrir. Esas partes hay que cogerlas con más paciencia; la parte en la que habla sobre marcas de coches casi hace que me explote la cabeza, ¡y mira que es breve!

[Dozy Pilchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has something to benefit most people, regardless of their area of interest. I hoped to gain something of value from this book that I might use in my music production endeavours. I feel that I have, to some degree, benefitted from the ideas and thoughts in this book. I have taken on board elements around quality, context, originality and availability. All good considerations. I would be interested to know how others have employed the learning in this book to benefit their endeavours.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable book. Well researched. Well argued. Well constructed.

In a world of excess, how do we select texts and products? How do we select for meaning and mattering, rather than convenience?

Bhaskar has produced a very well structured book and argument, concluding with the 'curation of the self.'

While information literacy theories and researchers are lacking, this is a strong book to enable both agency and decision making.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es interesante el tema, de hecho la preciación histórica se acerca a la hecha en el libro La Tercera Ola, después de tener el libro supe que Michael Bhaskar fue editor de ese libro, pero adolece de que trata de profundizar mucho y dar demasiados ejemplos, aburre mucho a ratos, los mismos temas podrían haberse tratado en la mitad de las páginas. Pero son interesantes los temas propuestas, cómo para comprar el formato digital y resumirlo en chat gpt , y que nos cure el libro...

[Wladimir Albuja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read the book and I share most of the opinions shared by the community. It’s a good book to get a wider vision of the problem of excess and how curation has become a solution. It’s good reading for young students of information science studies as it covers every single aspect of the production of knowledge and it’s management in our societies.

[Nia Nymue · Rating 3 out of 5]

The divisions between chapters aren't very clean cut. I would have preferred if historical/ current contextual background info were kept isolated from the more practical applications he's trying to share.

Also, diagrams would have helped a lot. While there are some, and a few pictures, more would be great for this particular book.

[Debora · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book presents an interesting topic that absolutely is actual nowadays in our world of excesses.
However, I must say I'm a little disappointed because, even though there are some great examples, I would have preferred for it to be more focused on the publishing industry.

The text is really nice to read, never boring.

[Elvia Roldán · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo comencé a leer en digital y me gustó tanto que lo compré en físico para subrayarlo, anotarlo todo y acumularlo en mi librera.

Es un libro que habla de la curaduría en general, no está enfocado únicamente en el arte. Me hizo comprender el concepto amplio que tiene la acción de "curar" y todos los campos en los que se utiliza implícitamente.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and a easy to follow exploration of the concept of curation. This book helped me organise some of my own thinking about curation and curatorial processes. Lots of great examples of curation at work.

[Nils · Rating 3 out of 5]

Einige sehr spannende Ideen zu Prinzipien und Effekten des mittlerweile allgegenwärtigen Kuratierens. Verliert sich im langen letzten Teil dann aber leider in Anekdoten, denen eine gründliche Systematisierung gut getan hätte.

[Jael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fresh perspective and angle to the current world of abundance
Good deep dive into the need and the types of curation especially business value and models
However the writing can be more concise, some points are belaboured and circular.
Worth a read

[Seda Nur]

One of the comments here said: "The problem with this book is that it really needed curating itself." I agree with that. I just dropped after some repetitive examples. Though, the main idea is good to know and see with some examples.

[isa lim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like many self help ish books it has an interesting thesis , encapsulated in chapters 4 and 5, but it just drags and keeps on making the same points over and over again. I didn’t finish it, just skipped around the first and third thirds of the book.

[Timofey Nosov · Rating 1 out of 5]

How can a book be so extremely vapid? Yes, everything can be a process of curation. That's it. The end of the book. Plus a lot of boring business examples. And a lot of twisted logic. No, curators don't make the economy grow. The growth of the economy makes curators a thing.

[M.R. Raghu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good take on how trends are changing. While curation is traditionally understood in the context of art and museums, the author explains it reach to unicorns, retail, etc.

[Etienne Boeziek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een interesant onderwerp en leerzaam. Zeker in deze tijd van alles overload. Echter valt veel in de herhaling waardoor je het idee hebt dat je niet opschiet in het boek.

[Alessandro Artuso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very, very interesting study on the everspreading applications of what"curating" is today.