Adapt Audiobook By Tim Harford cover art

Adapt

Why Success Always Starts with Failure

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Adapt

By: Tim Harford
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
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About this listen

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.

2012, CMI Management Book of the Year, Long-listed

2012, Axiom Business Book Awards, Winner

©2011 Tim Harford (P)2011 Hachette Audio UK Career Success Decision-Making & Problem Solving Economics Management Management & Leadership Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Sociology Theory
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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.

Aged but still very insightful

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