Adapt

Why Success Always Starts with Failure

By: Tim Harford

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

In this groundbreaking work, Tim Harford shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. Harford argues that today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinions; 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 compelling stories 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 the financial crisis.

©2011 Original material © 2011 Tim Harford. Recorded by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. (P)2011 Hachette Digital. Produced by Heavy Entertainment.

Critic reviews

“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)

“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)

Overall — A description of what ails the world

Currently western culture does everything it can to wish away risk, thinking if we don't acknowledge the risks that are part of life, they will never happen. However taking risks and overcoming them is the basis all growth. If we ever want to see growth in all aspects of humanity we need to increase the rewards for risk takers, and realize that failure in not some sort of killer plague, but rather part of the process.

Learn to learn

This is a super fun read. Keep at it and discover new ways to recover from mistakes and create a process for continuous improvement.

Interesting but long

Although this book was an influence on a really good book,’Black Box Thinking’ by Matthew Syed, and it’s overall message was conveyed, it seem to drag on at times.

In the vein of Predictably Irrational

If you liked Dan Ariely's book and the Freakonomics books, which I did, this is right up your alley. The only criticism I have is that the book doesn't flow as well as I would like. The first part about Iraq and Afghanistan just completely through me. I was beginning to feel cheated (I could really care less about the wars). But Harford managed to win me over and make it all relevant.

Accents.... fffffff

I would have given 5 stars were not for the annoying imitation of accents. Why do they have to do such a theatrical and discriminatory parody. Irritating and plainly insulting.
Otherwise a very nice book.

NEW Ideas in HERE!

This book has some great ideas in it. Things that I have not heard before. Worth IT.

I liked it!

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure is a book full of interesting stories, about some curious characters that I've never heard of. It is an easy listening that stresses trial and error and complexity of problems.
His 3 Principles- try new things/ ideas; make failure survivable; learn from your mistakes and adapt, and in the end, he gives the the forth principle: security (or delusion of security).

great with real non-life threatening example

excellent and simple strategies that you can use when not negotiating for someone's life. The real life examples for business were useful.

Entertaining as well as instructive

If you could sum up Adapt in three words, what would they be?

Adapt is a great listen, with compelling stories and a consistent theme.

What other book might you compare Adapt to and why?

Adapt is comparable to Wikinomics, in how they are both full of interesting examples illustrating different aspectsof their main themes.

Which scene was your favorite?

My favorite part is the narration of how Jeff Bezos drives Amazon employees to maximize the rate of experimentation.

So very practical

Mr. Tim Harford has a way of framing and explaining the complex issues surrounding failure in a way that it’s as if any and all failures aren’t failures at all, but opportunities. Incredibly useful information.