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Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
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Sales rank 480,840
Customers rating (based on 18 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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| Publisher | Pantheon | | Release date | 02/2006 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $24.95 | | Our price | $24.95 | | Used price | from $0.01 |
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Failure Happens
: A sometimes eloquent examination of why failure is so common.
(@ BusinessWeek)
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 Interesting and Witty
Most things fail - including social policies - because of complexity and uncertainty. Ormerod shows how different social policies, like integration, for example, can fail because policy makers can not take into account uncertainties and complexities that reveal themselves at a level not available to the policy makers. Ormerod also gives as an example the effort to reduce inequality, and how that has not been achieved despite different attempts. He skewers traditional economists who place too much emphasis and faith in theories based on perfect rationality and perfect markets. He demonstrates how neither of these exist and only give the illusion of control. Along the way, Ormerod intersperses his text with themes from literature to illustrate his points. He has a sharp sense of humor, and throws this into the mix to actually elicit a chuckle from a text essentially about economics. Despite avoiding the use of mathematical formulas (or maths, as he calls them) there are some passages that are challenging for the non-economists. Nevertheless, as a whole the book is accessible to the lay reader and sheds much light on why so many of our governmental, social and even personal decisions can go awry.
why DO most things fail?
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.
counter intuitive findings
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.
 Give this a miss - interesting concept, badly written
I was looking forward to reading about insights into the high failure rate we observe in different walks of life. I was disappointed to find instead a dull and verbose book, offering no new thoughts and with incoherent arguments lacking in rigorous analysis. The "Making Sense of Segregation" chapter held much promise, but held a tenuous link to the book's theme and offered no explanation of ethnic segregation other than weak social preferences (What about lack of economic choice for low-income earners? What about the high level of social integration observed for East Asians? Why dismiss the contrary evidence observed in London?). Give this rambling and self-serving book a miss.
Systems (Both Social & Economical) -- Growing Evidence of Fractal & Power Law Connectivity
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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