All reviews for Adáptate (2011)
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Like every other book by Harford, Adapt is a highly cherry-picked assembly of anecdotes around a central theme. It's interesting, but not without flaws; he contradicts himself more than once, and his foray into the problems of complexity lead him away from the main idea for a few chapters in the middle. The last chapter contains a lot that's almost verbatim repetition. At times the content seems a little obvious: I do wonder how much has been simplified so that the likes of me can understand it.
Fantastic synthesis of numerous ideas from different fields - complexity theory, travels thru solution space via evolution complete with small forays and huge leaps, Christensen's disruptive innovation, James Reason's work on human error, Thaler's Nudge. Includes numerous practical examples - development of the Spitfire, strategy in Iraq, etc. Basic idea is that experiments ending in failure serve as informative events - the one missing piece is Shannon's theory.
Good. Another one on the resiliance theme.