• Adapt

  • Why Success Always Starts with Failure
  • By: Tim Harford
  • Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
  • Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (42 ratings)

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Adapt  By  cover art

Adapt

By: Tim Harford
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
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Publisher's summary

Everything we know about solving the world’s problems is wrong. Out: Plans, experts and above all, leaders. In: Adapting - improvise rather than plan; fail, learn, and try again.

In this groundbreaking new book, Tim Harford shows how the world’s most complex and important problems - including terrorism, climate change, poverty, innovation, and the financial crisis - can only be solved from the bottom up by rapid experimenting and adapting.

From a spaceport in the Mojave Desert to the street battles of Iraq, from a blazing offshore drilling rig to everyday decisions in our business and personal lives, this is a handbook for surviving - and prospering - in our complex and ever-shifting world.

©2011 Tim Harford (P)2011 Hachette Digital

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Aged but still very insightful

This book is great for anyone who enjoys the Cautionary Tales podcast. If expands on a lot of stories touched upon there (and I presume a lot that will be featured in future episodes). The thesis is presented clearly and the stories that support it are very interesting. Narrated well, this book is excellent for walks.

The author draws on examples from nature, experiments, disaster stories and complicated social and business issues to demonstrate how flexibility, experimentation and unexpected strategies can lead to good outcomes. Conversely lack of them can lead to bad ones.

My only criticism (if it can be called that) is that time has unfortunately made some of the statistics and stories a bit dated (particularly ones related to climate change and strategies of dealing with it). But this is a very small caveat for an otherwise insightful read.

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