Why Most Things Fail: And How to Avoid It
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"'Engrossing and entertaining... A careful, comprehensible analysis of the limits of human rationality's ability to control the world.' Alasdair Palmer, Sunday Telegraph 'Gripping stuff.' Krishna Guha, Financial Times"
Book Description
The essential book on why some business fail ... and how to avoid it.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed,
This review is from: Why Most Things Fail: And How to Avoid It (Paperback)
I was expecting to get more from this than I did. As a critique of mainstream economics it succeeds, and as a way of modelling economic activity it appears to offer some genuine insight. The idea of bringing economics up to date with some of the more creative methods from the natural sciences is a welcome one, and it is even a good read.The ending (what is to be done) is really weak though, so having teased us with little asides from Shakespeare and Voltaire, appearing to be leading us towards a brilliant final twist, we are left with a resounding 'so what'. Does the model he has developed tell us anything new or important about fizzy drinks, and if it does, why would it matter? This can't be the main purpose. On the other hand, there are some curious, mildly radical, political issues arising here and there, about endogenous, inevitable system failure, and even how this might be a good thing, but instead we get rather forced case studies, usually involving Anglo American business stereotypes as reassurance. I would have preferred it if he had simply stated that the technique he is developing is new, and that he doesn't know what it means. However, for anybody studying economics, read Ormerod, but maybe not this one first!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How evolution explains business failures,
By
This review is from: Why Most Things Fail: And How to Avoid It (Paperback)
This excellent, short work by Paul Ormerod is a worthy successor to his remarkably successful Butterfly Economics. As he did in that work, he draws here on lessons from biology to explain phenomena in economics. He covers a wide range of subjects, time periods and theories, all tied together (though not without some straining at the rope) by an inquiry into failure. Although Ormerod makes every effort to keep the work accessible, that scarcely makes it is easy reading. Readers who lack at least a nodding acquaintance with scientific writings and economic studies may find this hard slogging indeed. With that caveat, getAbstract thinks that readers who have a background in this field should pay serious attention to Ormerod's ideas. The notion that failure is inherent and inevitable for many systems ought to guide business strategies and - especially - government regulation.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
counter intuitive findings,
By Stephen Parry "Author of Sense and Respond" (Lean Service Transformation Designer London) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Why Most Things Fail: And How to Avoid It (Paperback)
Paul has written a fascinating and entertaining book on the probability of failure and develops what he calls an extinction model. As a strategist working within large corporations I found the application of these ideas to the world of work a novel and practical use of the 'extinction factor'.He goes on to examine the factors that prevent extinction, one major finding was that only a small increase in the application of knowledge and information (5%) in the formation of Strategies will improve survival chances by 40%. Further improvement towards 10% and survival chances increase exponentially. The book uses many cases to explain how this is achieved. One other counter intuitive finding was mild tendencies at the individual level within organisations create marked differences at the level of the corporate system as a whole. This has enormous implications for the world of organisational development. I now use many of the statistics and contexts Paul provides in material I use with senior executives. Excellent book.
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