Adapt by Tim Harford

The subtitle of Adapt is "Why Success Always Starts With Failure." Fitting. The history of great ideas is littered with examples of failure. In just about any endeavor, failure is much more common than success. Using a diverse range of examples and case studies, Tim Harford (who is known as the Undercover Economist and writes the Dear Economist column for the London-based Financial Times) makes a strong case for failure being a critical component of success.

There are a lot of ways for a business, organization, or even a lone person to be successful in an ever changing landscape of whim, desire, need, and mind-share. Using examples from the war in Iraq, Google, the company that makes GORE-TEX, the "too big to fail" financial meltdown, the problems caused by carbon, and a Twyla Tharp musical (among others), Harford presents a strong case for the necessity of failure. Failure may be necessary, but it is only useful if you learn something from it.

Fail, Fail, Fail -----> Succeed!

Harford begins with some pretty harsh (but fair) criticism of the way the Unites States initially conducted the war in Iraq and makes no bones about exactly who was to blame for years of questionable results. Chalk it all up to a failure to recognize reality and a failure to adapt. A war can not be molded to fit the abilities of an army, an army must mold itself to fit the needs of the conflict and Harford gives numerous examples of how that has largely been accomplished (once Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was removed from the scene).

Google is well know for a few really successful products like Google Search and Gmail. They are also known for a long list of colossal failures (like Wave and Buzz). No matter, the success of their few winners more than compensates for any loss resulting from their failures. Google succeeds over the long haul because they are willing to let people use company time to develop their own ideas. The good ideas survive peer review and perhaps garner support from above. The ones that don't, well, they are left to die. But the important thing is, a killed idea is no biggie. Google expects most ideas to fail. Indeed, so do the other successful companies and people discussed in the book.

How to Fail and Still Succeed

Most success is fleeting. There is always someone trying to do things better, or invent something we didn't even know we needed. Change is disruptive and it's hard to make a good idea last. One good idea must lead to another, and another, and so on for success to have any legs. How do you do that?

You must be able to adapt.  There has to be a mechanism in a person or an organization that allows for experimentation, with the understanding that most experiments will fail. The few that work out lead to market-leading products, like Elixer guitar strings, or war-winning aircraft designs like the Spitfire of World War II.

There are plenty of nuggets of helpful information to be gleaned from a careful reading of Adapt. However, if one could summarize the theme of this book in a few lines, it would be hard to improve upon the three principles Harford attributes to an unfortunate Russian engineer named Peter Palchinsky (unfortunate because he happened to be a smart, no-nonsense guy living during the Stalin era). The "Palchinsky Principles" are:

1. Seek out new ideas and try new things
2. Try new things on a small scale so that failure is survivable.
3. Seek feedback and learn from your mistakes as you go.

We are wise to accept failure as a useful (no, not merely useful—necessary) part of a process that, along with healthy dose of perseverance and a reasonable amount of intelligence, can result in something truly great. Because, as Harford summarizes near the end of his excellent book "...we're unlikely to get it right the first time."

References

Adapt: Why Success Always Begins With Failure. Tim Harford. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, NY, 2011