
How Big Things Get Done
The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything in Between
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Narrated by:
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Rob Shapiro
About this listen
One of The Economist’s Best Books of 2023
The secrets to successfully planning and delivering ambitious, complex projects on any scale—from home renovation to space exploration—by the world's leading expert on megaprojects.
Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York's skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.
These are wonderful stories. But most of the time big visions turn into nightmares. Remember Boston’s “Big Dig”? Almost every sizeable city in the world has such a fiasco in its backyard. In fact, no less than 92% of megaprojects come in over budget or over schedule, or both. The cost of California’s high-speed rail project soared from $33 billion to $100 billon—and won’t even go where promised. More modest endeavors, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why?
Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed “the world’s leading megaproject expert.” In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors in judgment and decision-making that lead projects, both big and small, to fail, and the research-based principles that will make you succeed with yours. For example:
- Understand your odds. If you don't know them, you won't win.
- Plan slow, act fast. Getting to the action quick feels right. But it's wrong.
- Think right to left. Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there.
- Find your Lego. Big is best built from small.
- Be a team maker. You won't succeed without an "us."
- Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they can't, so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can.
- Know that your biggest risk is you.
Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House, to the making of the latest Pixar blockbusters, to a home renovation in Brooklyn gone awry, How Big Things Get Done reveals how to get any ambitious project done—on time and on budget.
For a visual representation of the charts and graphs mentioned throughout, as well as Appendix A and B, please be sure to download the Bonus PDF accompanying this program.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2023 Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Entertaining . . . The picture that [Flyvbjerg] and Mr Gardner draw of why projects, large and small, tend to go wrong is compelling. . . . There are lessons here for managers of all stripes.” —The Economist
“Stories of gigantic and costly failures, from the Sydney Opera House to successive editions of the Olympic Games, are entertaining and chastening in equal measure. But Flyvbjerg and Gardner also manage to extract valuable lessons about how to plan, forecast and execute any size of project, be it a kitchen remodelling or a high-speed trainlink.” —Financial Times, Best Summer Books of 2023: Business
“Ignore [this book] at your peril.” —Peter Coy, The New York Times
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Story
As the cofounder of Waze—the world's leading commuting and navigation app with more than 700 million users to date, and which Google acquired in 2013 for $1.15 billion—Levine is committed to spreading entrepreneurial thinking so that other founders, managers, and employees in the tech space can build their own highly valued companies. Levine offers an inside look at the creation and sale of Waze and his second unicorn, Moovit, revealing the formula that drove those companies to compete with industry veterans and giants alike.
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Ok but not great
- By Didier Vallauri on 01-30-23
By: Uri Levine
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Billionaires' Row
- Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers
- By: Katherine Clarke
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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To look south and skyward from Central Park these days is to gaze upon a physical manifestation of tens of billions of dollars in global wealth: a series of soaring spires stretching from Park Avenue to Broadway. Known as Billionaires’ Row, this set of slender high-rise residences has transformed the skyline of New York City, thanks to developer-friendly policies and a seemingly endless gush of cash from tech, finance, and foreign oligarchs. And chances are most of us will never be invited to step inside.
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Fantastic read/listen
- By Anonymous User on 03-15-25
By: Katherine Clarke
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Future Babble
- Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
- By: Dan Gardner
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In Future Babble, award-winning journalist Dan Gardner presents landmark research debunking the whole expert prediction industry and explores our obsession with the future. The truth is that experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys.
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Future Babble Babble
- By Karen on 05-04-11
By: Dan Gardner
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Start Finishing
- How to Go from Idea to Done
- By: Charlie Gilkey
- Narrated by: Charlie Gilkey
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Original Recording
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Too often we look back at the end of the week and are frustrated that we didn’t make progress on our soul-deep dreams and goals that seem to remain eternally out of reach. Start Finishing presents a 9-step method for success - including identifying your genius, building a success pack of supporters, navigating multiple projects, and overcoming the challenges that come with doing work that matters. Features contributions from Seth Godin, Susan Piver, Jonathan Fields, James Clear, and more.
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Couldn’t finish it
- By Gael Dalton on 11-28-19
By: Charlie Gilkey
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Makers
- The New Industrial Revolution
- By: Chris Anderson
- Narrated by: René Ruiz
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Chris Anderson takes you to the front lines of a new industrial revolution as today’s entrepreneurs, using open source design and 3-D printing, bring manufacturing to the desktop. In an age of custom-fabricated, do-it-yourself product design and creation, the collective potential of a million garage tinkerers and enthusiasts is about to be unleashed, driving a resurgence of American manufacturing. A generation of "Makers" using the Web’s innovation model will help drive the next big wave in the global economy, as the new technologies of digital design and rapid prototyping gives everyone the power to invent.
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Good basic information, but not a lot of good info
- By Tarik Y. on 11-30-12
By: Chris Anderson
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The Lean Builder
- A Builder's Guide to Applying Lean Tools in the Field
- By: Joe Donarumo, Keyan Zandy
- Narrated by: Joshua Alexander
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Sam Brooks, a young superintendent with ProCon Builders, has been given responsibility for the largest and most complicated project of his career. He struggles with all of the common difficulties in construction - lack of communication, coordination issues, and other kinds of wasteful occurrences that rob his project of time and money, while leaving him and his team frustrated and overworked.
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The book to change the Industry
- By Justin Davis on 09-05-20
By: Joe Donarumo, and others
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Cómo hacer grandes cosas [How Big Things Get Done]
- Los sorprendentes factores que marcan el destino de cualquier proyecto [The Surprising Factors That Mark the Destiny of Any Project]
- By: Bent Flyvbjerg, Dan Gardner, Joaquín Chamorro Mielke
- Narrated by: Antonio Raluy
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Nada es más inspirador que una ambiciosa visión que se convierte en una realidad triunfante: el Empire State Building pasó de ser un boceto a cambiar el skyline de Nueva York en tan solo veintiún meses. Sin embargo, la mayoría de las veces las grandes visiones se convierten en auténticas pesadillas: según las estadísticas, un asombroso 92 por ciento de los megaproyectos superan el presupuesto o el cronograma, o ambas cosas. Incluso los esfuerzos más modestos, como emprender un pequeño negocio, suelen fracasar.
By: Bent Flyvbjerg, and others
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Build
- An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
- By: Tony Fadell
- Narrated by: Tony Fadell, Roger Wayne
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone and Nest Learning Thermostat and learned enough in 30+ years in Silicon Valley about leadership, design, startups, Apple, Google, decision-making, mentorship, devastating failure and unbelievable success to fill an encyclopedia.
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Best guide for start up founders, ever!!!
- By Curly Beard on 05-28-22
By: Tony Fadell
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Upstream
- The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen
- By: Dan Heath
- Narrated by: Dan Heath
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Dan Heath examines how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from his innovative behavior research, as well as hundreds of new interviews with unconventional problem solvers. Most of us spend our days handling a deluge of pressing issues. We’re so accustomed to managing emergencies as they strike that we often don’t stop to think about how we could prevent crises before they happen. Why stop at treating the symptoms when you could develop a cure?
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Mixed review
- By Aaron on 12-09-20
By: Dan Heath
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The Geek Way
- The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
- By: Andrew McAfee
- Narrated by: Andrew McAfee, Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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What is “being geeky?” It’s being a perennially curious person, one who's not afraid to tackle hard problems and embrace unconventional solutions. McAfee shows how the geeks have created a new culture based around four norms: science, ownership, speed, and openness. The geek way seems odd at first. It's not deferential to experts, fond of planning and process, afraid of mistakes, or obsessed with "winning." But it explains everything from why Montessori babies turn out to be creative tinkerers to how newcomers are disrupting industry after industry (and still just getting started).
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speak truth to power
- By barkadoodle on 06-04-25
By: Andrew McAfee
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The Rape of the Mind
- The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing
- By: Dr. Joost A.M. Meerloo
- Narrated by: Chris Matthews
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Since 1933, when a completely drugged and trial-conditioned human wreck confessed to having started the Reichstag fire in Berlin, Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo has studied the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective "truth" onto their victims' minds. And in The Rape of the Mind, he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people's minds.
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not a fan of the narrator
- By Timothy Mack on 07-24-22
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The Heart of Business
- Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism
- By: Hubert Joly, Caroline Lambert - contributor
- Narrated by: Hubert Joly, William Sarris
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Having recently stepped down as chairman and CEO of Best Buy, Hubert Joly shares the leadership principles illustrated by multiple vivid and concrete stories that underpinned the remarkable resurgence of Best Buy and that he believes are at the heart of business: pursue a noble purpose, put people at the center, embrace all stakeholders, and treat profit as an outcome.
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We do need leaders who can anchor strategy in a Noble Purpose.
- By Angela on 07-03-21
By: Hubert Joly, and others
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Elevating Construction Superintendents
- A Principle Based Leadership Guide for Assistant Supers and Superintendents in Construction (The Art of the Builder, Book 1)
- By: Jason Schroeder
- Narrated by: Katie Schroeder
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Are you ready to take your next step? To be a great superintendent, you need training. This book will help you to do that and bring respect back to field positions everywhere. This book is filled with principles and actionable steps for assistant superintendents. I invite you to learn these, take massive action, and implement each step one-by-one. Please keep driving until everything on your project brings you joy. That is the measure of success. Expect more, step up, let's go!
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couldn't get over the narrator
- By Rodger on 06-18-25
By: Jason Schroeder
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2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Fun Lean Culture at Work & at Home, 3rd Edition
- By: Paul A. Akers
- Narrated by: Paul A. Akers
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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2 Second Lean will flip your world right-side up. It's a practical way to improve your life every day by making a simple two-second improvement. Join author, business expert, radio show host, and international speaker Paul A Akers, as he takes you on a LEAN journey that will transform every aspect your life - from your home to the office.
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I Listened To This Straight Thru!
- By Steve C Stutz on 08-06-15
By: Paul A. Akers
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Thinking in Systems
- A Primer
- By: Donella H. Meadows
- Narrated by: Tia Rider Sorensen
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....
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Skip to the Middle
- By John Chambers on 06-20-20
Should be required reading
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Good story, lots of history
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Real life examples, data, stats, and references to useful information
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Engaging, Informative, Useful
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Fantastic book, cover to cover
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“Your biggest risk is you “
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Must read for project management
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Superb advice delivered as entertainment
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Exceptional wisdom
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Best Book on Project Management
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