Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
6th April 2006 by Sean
| Author: Paul Ormerod |  |
Failure is a part of life, both in business and science, which is very much ignored in the business world, actually causing more failure. The book examines failure from three different aspects.
- a documentation of failure
- the subtle patterns found in the apparent disorder of failure
- the causes of failure
According to the author, understanding failure is more likely to lead to success than understanding success. Below is an excerpt that seems to sum up the author’s stance on failure.
I am often asked by would-be entrepreneurs seeking escape from life within huge corporate structures, “How do I build a small firm for myself?” The answer seems obvious: “Buy a very large one and just wait.”
What Business Week says.
Why Most Things Fail is Ormerod’s explanation of why failure is so common and apparently unavoidable, and what we can do about that unfortunate fact. He says the reason that companies are almost as likely to be blindsided as dodo birds is that the world is simply too complex and nonlinear for anyone to predict more than a short while ahead. What you can’t predict, you can’t avoid. And the reason that mass extinctions aren’t so rare is that species, and companies, exist in networks analogous to the World Wide Web. The complex webs of relationships in networks — some competing, some cooperating — can breed chaotic outcomes. Both successes and failures tend to cascade. Winners take all, or most, and losers disappear in great bunches.
A blog post by Tim Worstall.
A review by Jane Genova.
What Gaurdian Unlimited says.
In his provocative recent book Why Most Things Fail, the economist Paul Ormerod calls on planners and executives to face what he calls the last taboo in modern commercial and public policy - the predominance of failure. Companies and governments, argues Mr Ormerod, pretend that they are more successful than they are. Both public and private sectors promote planning, strategies, targets and monitoring, even though they may not work.