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Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics Hardcover – February 28, 2006

by Paul Ormerod (Author)

25 customer reviews

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—

With the same originality and astuteness that marked his widely praised Butterfly Economics, Paul Ormerod now examines the “Iron Law of Failure” as it applies to business and government–and explains what can be done about it.

“Failure is all around us,” asserts Ormerod. For every General Electric–still going strong after more than one hundred years–there are dozens of businesses like Central Leather, which was one of the world’s largest companies in 1912 but was liquidated in 1952. Ormerod debunks conventional economic theory–that the world economy ticks along in perfect equilibrium according to the best-laid plans of business and government–and delves into the reasons for the failure of brands, entire companies, and public policies. Inspired by recent advances in evolutionary theory and biology, Ormerod illuminates the ways in which companies and policy-setting sectors of government behave much like living organisms: unless they evolve, they die. But he also makes clear how desirable social and economic outcomes may be achieved when individuals, companies and governments adapt in response to the actual behavior and requirements of their customers and constituents.

Why Most Things Fail is a fascinating and provocative study of a truth all too seldom acknowledged.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Businesses collapse just as surely as people do, yet economics textbooks and financial reporters stubbornly concentrate on success rather than failure. Ormerod (Butterfly Economics) argues this outlook is fundamentally flawed; failure, he says, is "the distinguishing feature of corporate life," and he uses it to link economic models with models of biological evolution, which he presents as a string of extinctions rather than survival of the fittest. Despite this parallel, his focus is on economic theory and what he sees as its inadequate accounting of uncertainty (defined as the impossibility of knowing how policies or business strategies will work) and how it breeds failure. He writes about complex concepts such as power-law behavior, game theory and bounded rationality, but makes them accessible to the lay reader with lengthy but readable explanations that forsake jargon for contemporary cultural references. (Though people who are already familiar with the debates he brings up will doubtless get more out of the book) Yet for all his persuasive examples, the book never crystallizes into a whole, so while readers may find many parts provocative, they are likely to finish it still lacking a complete understanding of failure as Ormerod sees it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Economist Ormerod addresses "what is probably the most fundamental feature of both biological and human social and economic systems: failure. Species fail and become extinct, brands fail, companies fail, public policies fail." It is fortunate that everything does not fail at once. With an emphasis on reality and not theory, he offers three themes: a documentation of failure, the subtle patterns he finds in the apparent disorder of failure, and the causes of failure. Ormerod concludes that innovation is the guiding principle that companies use to try to overcome the uncertainty surrounding their decisions. Management responds with constant action, testing new ideas, new brands, and new products because they cannot know with absolute certainty why an individual brand fails, and almost all brands eventually fail. The focus on innovation, developing new strategies for individual survival, is also important for consumers and citizens. This is challenging reading and not recommended for the casual reader. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product details

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Pantheon; First Edition edition (February 28, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375424059
ISBN-13: 978-0375424052
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 25 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,042,254 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1822 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Theory

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Carolyn Thornlow

why DO most things fail?

July 19, 2009

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It's hard to get the answer to "Why Most Things Fail." The book goes deep into mathematical formulas. Admittedly, I don't bring to this reading a background in math or economics. So, most of this exploration lost me. However, since I was still looking for the answer as to WHY most things fail I did look for the conclusions and links. Even if I were able to resolve Nash equilibria and the like, there was no correlation to the supposed narrative exploration that I could see.

This does not mean that there is no value to this book. What Ormerod does posit is that there are immutable Power Laws affecting all matter - species, ideologies and businesses alike. All things fail. That alone is a powerful reframing. Existence of anything could probably be more successfully extended when strategies are anchored to this position.

In one small paragraph toward the end, Ormerod does state rather succinctly the reason why things fail. It is that we as humans are limited in our ability to understand dynamic and complex environments. While we certainly can't grasp everything, there are more correlations perhaps worthy of another study. Our understanding has increased over the millennia in direct correlation to the length and quality of our existence. That is why the pursuit of information and insights, even if they are difficult to follow as they are in this book,is worthwhile.

3 people found this helpful4 people found this helpful

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Cliente Kindle

It`s an excellent book about extinction

September 3, 2014

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It`s an excellent book about extinction, mainly companies` extinction, with serious critics to many economic models. Even though criticism of economical models is not new and can be found in many books, it shows the limits of each approach and why these simplifications can have impacts on planning. It`s not a book for those who are not interested in a in-depht and serious reading about the subject. I`d recommend it to economists and value investors that are interested about why even large companies usually have a so limited longevity, since their life cycle is not so bounded as it is for a living being and how extinctions happens. Is it causes by competition among companies at the same industry? Is it caused by external causes, like general economic crisis? Or maybe is it caused by both?
Paul Ormerod has a serious approach to this problem and shows it in an accessible way for those who have any background on economics. I recommend it for anyone interested on the subject.

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Carlton Howard

Very much worth a read - but haven't economists figured out that folks aren't rational in the real world by now?

August 25, 2015

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A great read - a little dry in parts - I'd forgotten how dry economics can be - last studied them (in school) in the late 1970s!!!!

Still can't get beyond the "equilibria" notion - in the real world "all other things are NEVER equal" - plus humans do not make rational choices.

Seems like economists would have figured that out by now - it's not like hyperbolic discounting is a new theory.

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Mark C. Weber

Why This Book Fails

August 27, 2013

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Ormerod seems to be adressing his book to public managers or business managers. In my opinion, he delves too deeply into economic analyses that are not necessary for the ultimately simple and straightforward conclusions that he arrives at. Instead, the economic analysis seems to be intended more to prove a point to the vast majority of economic experts that he berates and disagrees with. The chapters are disjointed and at times it can be difficult to tell what point the author is trying to make. From the attitude that the author displays in the book, I'm sure he would discount my review, claiming that I'm too simple-minded to follow his logic. So be it. I didn't like this book at all.

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Mediocre - Does Not Deliver on Its Promise

July 4, 2006

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I bought this book hoping for insight into "why most things fail." What I got was a rambling argument grounded primarily on the similarity of the frequency distributions of business failure and biological failures (extinctions). Frankly, the relationship hardly strikes me as logically necessary, and the relation could well be spurious (or coincidental). But I'm no PhD and didn't give it a lot of thought, so I could well be wrong.

What I am certain of is that the book offered little else, no corrolaries, certainly no explanation of the reasons "why most things fail," and no other practical insights or knowledge.

Bottom line, wait for the book's appearance in the discount bin before buying.

28 people found this helpful29 people found this helpful

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pogopogo

Lousy pop economics

May 1, 2007

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This book is written at the seventh grade level and is consistently vapid. There are intriguing ideas--the similarities of rates of extinction and failures of businesses, but there's no real attempt to explain these similarities beyond telling us that the relevant curves obey a power law. We already knew that lots of businesses fail and that it's hard even for giant companies to keep up, but there's nothing added here that explains any of this.

If you want exciting pop economics, read Steven Landsburg.

5 people found this helpful6 people found this helpful

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James East

Systems (Both Social & Economical) -- Growing Evidence of Fractal & Power Law Connectivity

May 26, 2007

I have two perspectives for the review of Mr. Ormerod's fine book. First - if you are new to this subject, the book is interesting throughout as it helps explain, or at least builds a framework to hang our hats own about why some things seem to succeed and others fail. There are multitudes of examples from the pet rock (succeed), to the Edsel (a considered failure).

Second - if you are familiar with the subject of extinction theory and dynamic systems, the book starts out slow, but really hits its stride in Chapter 8 "Doves & Hawks" (and forward) as we start to get into examples of dynamic theory and extinction theory/data. In Chapter 10 "The Powers That Be" we learn that systems in which the connections are not random but follow a power law have completely different properties than ones that do, since it is the structure of the connections between the component parts (i.e. agents) which gives systems their distinctive and characteristic features.

No, don't be afraid, as this is not a technical book as I make it out to be as all the examples are easy to read and comprehend. If you are interested in this subject, other fine books to review are Ubiquity by Mark Buchanan, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, or Deep Simplicity by John Gribbin.

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