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Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure Hardcover – May 10, 2011

by Tim Harford (Author)

93 customer reviews

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In this groundbreaking book, Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist, shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. When faced with complex situations, we have all become accustomed to looking to our leaders to set out a plan of action and blaze a path to success. Harford argues that today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinion; the world has become far too unpredictable and profoundly complex. Instead, we must adapt.

Deftly weaving together psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, physics, and economics, along with the compelling story of hard-won lessons learned in the field, Harford makes a passionate case for the importance of adaptive trial and error in tackling issues such as climate change, poverty, and financial crises—as well as in fostering innovation and creativity in our business and personal lives.

Taking us from corporate boardrooms to the deserts of Iraq, Adapt clearly explains the necessary ingredients for turning failure into success. It is a breakthrough handbook for surviving—and prospering— in our complex and ever-shifting world.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Harford] offers a very useful guide for people preparing to live in the world as it really is.” — David Brooks, The New York Times

“Brainy . . . Harford has a knack for making complicated ideas sound simple.” — James Pressley, Bloomberg News

“Tim Harford’s terrific new book urges us to understand profit from our muddling . . . Harford is a gifted writer whose prose courses swiftly and pleasurably. He has assembled a powerful combination of anecdotes and data to make a serious point: companies, governments and people must recognise the limits of their wisdom and embrace the muddling of mankind.” — Edward Glaeser, Financial Times

“Harford’s case histories are well chosen and artfully told, making the book a delight to read. But its value is greater than that. Strand by strand, it weaves the stories into a philosophical web that is neat, fascinating and brilliant . . . It advances the subject as well as conveying it, drawing intriguing conclusions about how to run companies, armies and research labs.” —Matt Ridley, Nature

“One of the best writers who also happens to be an economist.”—Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics blog

“This is a brilliant and fascinating book—Harford’s range of research is both impressive and inspiring, and his conclusions are provocative. The message about the need to accept failure has important implications, not just for policy making but also for people’s professional and personal lives. It should be required reading for anyone serving in government, working at a company, trying to build a career or simply trying to navigate an increasingly complex world.”—Gillian Tett, author of Fool’s Gold: The Inside Story of J.P. Morgan and How Wall St. Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe

“Harford’s wide-ranging look at social adaptation is fresh, creative, and timely.”—Sheena Iyengar, author of The Art of Choosing

“Adapt is a highly readable, even entertaining, argument against top-down design. It debunks the Soviet-Harvard command-and-control style of planning and approach to economic policies and regulations and vindicates trial and error (particularly the error part) as a means to economic and general progress. Very impressive!” —Nassim N. Taleb, Distinguised Professor of Risk Engineering, NYU-Poly Institute and author of The Black Swan

“Tim Harford has made a compelling and expertly informed case for why we need to embrace risk, failure, and experimentation in order to find great ideas that will change the world. I loved the book.” —Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality

“Tim Harford could well be Britain's Malcolm Gladwell. An entertaining mix of popular economics and psychology, this excellently written book contains fascinating stories of success and failure that will challenge your assumptions. Insightful and clever.” —Alex Bellos, author of Here’s Looking at Euclid

About the Author

Tim Harford is the Undercover Economist and Dear Economist columnist for the Financial Times. His writing has also appeared in Esquire, Forbes, New York magazine, Wired, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. His previous books include The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life. Harford presents the popular BBC radio show More or Less and is a visiting fellow at London's Cass Business School. He is the winner of the 2006 Bastiat Prize for economic journalism and the 2010 Royal Statistical Society Award for excellence in journalism.

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Product details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 10, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374100969
ISBN-13: 978-0374100964
Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
Average Customer Review: 93 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #927,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1380 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Theory
- #1625 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Applied Psychology
- #2027 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Personality

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Hardly ground-breaking. In fact, quite boring.

June 10, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

My God...this is one of the dullest books I have ever read. The entire book can be summarized into three sentences.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

"Look a the big picture."

"Do your research."

There is nothing ground-breaking in this book. It is filled with anecdotal stories of how people failed a few times before they found success in whatever plan they created. Hardly novel. If I wasn't required to finish the book for a class, I would have set it aside by now.

One person found this helpful

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Mr. Harford's own experiment

June 16, 2012

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Different from Mr. Harford's other work in economics, this book aims to cover a wider subject: how to solve large and complex problem such as fighting terrorists? The main idea is, instead of following a master plan laid out by leaders, we should experiment and approach complex problems by trial-and-error. Solving problems by iterative approaches is hardly new, and you would expect Mr. Harford to elaborate on how to run experiments more efficiently or shorten the discovery process. After all, exploring takes resources and is not free. However, this is where the book falls short of scientific precision. Mr. Harford argues mostly based on anecdotes, although from a variety of fields, not rigorous scientific or economic studies. Moreover, rather than providing positive examples, Mr. Harford spent more time on the failure of leadership and complexity of problems nowadays. The reports around climate change, although interesting, do not enhance the logic connection between solving complex problem and trial-and-error main thesis.

5 people found this helpful

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A little bit disappointing.

February 10, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Ever since Harford's "the undercover economist", I have read most of his books. To be fully honest, none has been as good as the first one. Maybe "The undercover economist" was really fresh and original, and the others, although equally good, are not "that fresh and innovative".
Anyway, I didn't like the military examples and all the stuff related to Irak. Maybe such examples make a clear point, but war stories are definitively not my my cup of tea. The main argument, trial and error are needed to reach success, is interesting, and many other sections of the book are valuable. If this is your first Harford's book, then I would suggest you having instead the one mentioned earlier. Otherwise, for those who like Harford, this is not his best (in my opinion), but it is not that bad.

2 people found this helpful

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Best book I've read this year

May 18, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

A fantastic combination of evidence, discussion, and interpretation fit to influence anything from personal choices to the organizational issues of a large company. I've read numerous books from the last few years on business issues, learning from data, and the role of failures, several of which are cited by Hartford, and Adapt, I believe, is the strongest, both in its evidence and in the style of its presentation. Refreshingly, it is neither meant to be a ridiculously formal treatise nor an unfounded opinion, but presents simply a series of lessons learned about successes and interesting commonalities. Since reading this book, I can't help but find patterns matching those Hartford describes, and have begun to estimate the success of the various activities I see as a function of how well they accept and learn from their failures.

Hartford's resources and interpretation are excellent, and the citations alone form a formidable addition to any "must read" list.

2 people found this helpful

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April 4, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Author has a compelling thesis, but the ideas somehow get lost in the middle of the book. Chapters 1-3 are interesting but chapters 4-6 are very unpleasant to read (many anecdotes and lots of storytelling, but the content is not so strongly related to the core ideas presented earlier). The book could have been 50% shorter.

2 people found this helpful

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Good for an entrepreneur

February 10, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I read this book for a college course on goal-setting. However, what I found it applicable for was entrepreneurs. My husband is one and this book really sheds light on the business processes of adapting and being ready and embracing failure. This book is filled with applicable stories and ideas for the businessman in charge. Although a slow read at times, this book will make an impact in your life if you are ready for it so plow through.

2 people found this helpful

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Raymond L. Straw

Failures have a good side

January 23, 2012

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

There are numerous that things can go wrong with an individual, the government, energy production, and finance. This book focuses on what can be done to prevent a small failure in any of these from taking down a person, system or government.

There are lots of wonderful perspectives in the book. To me the most interesting was the concept of decoupling implemented in the design of banking, nuclear reactors, and oil drilling platforms. If one part of a system fails, the other parts are protected from collateral failure. An absolute worst case failure causes very limited damage.

Decoupling a large, diverse bank would involve keeping the ordinary deposits accounts of individuals and corporations in a stand alone bank division. If the stand alone bank fails government protection of operations would be appropriate.

The rest of the banking activities would be in a separate bank that had no claim on the ordinary bank deposits or reserves. This means that capitalization for the ordinary bank part would in no way be connected to capitalization of the more speculative activities. If the speculative activities go bust they would have no affect on the capital and operations of the stand alone bank. The capital could not be moved or used in any way to cushion the speculative activities. An appropriate setup of the speculative bank should then be able to minimize the need for government backing.

Life is not risk free, but this book suggests that tremendous risks can be reduced by decoupling by design. I heartily recommend the book.

One person found this helpful

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