Tim Harford on Adapt and the Virtues of Failure

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2011

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

Tim Harford, author and journalist, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Adapt, Harford's book on the virtues of failure and the trial and error process. Harford argues that success is more likely when there is experimentation and trial and error followed by adapting, rather than following a top-down, ex ante plan driven by expertise. The conversation looks at the what war can teach us about information, knowledge, and planning, the challenge of admitting mistakes, and the implications of trial and error for our daily lives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Today is May 6, 2001, and my guest is Tim Hartford, author and columnist for
0:45.0	the Financial Times. His latest book is Adapt. Why success always starts with failure, Tim, welcome
0:51.1	to econtalk. Thanks very much, Russ. Nice to be on the show again. Before we begin, I want to let
0:56.5	listeners know we're trying something a little different today with our technology for recording the
1:01.1	program. It's an experiment. It may be a failure that leads to success, or it may be an outright
1:05.7	success. Either way, let us know what you think of the sound quality of today's podcast by dropping
1:10.1	me an email at mail at econtalk.org. Now let's turn to Tim and his book Adapt. Tim, what is the
1:17.5	connection between success and failure that you trace out in the book? It's quite simply that in a
1:24.3	complex world, and I begin the book by trying to explain how complex the world really is, this
1:29.0	amazing society that we've created, this very complex economy we've created, in a complex world,
1:34.4	there's a lot of failure, and that needn't necessarily be anything to worry about. Very successful
1:40.3	economies have very high levels of failure. Successful organizations have high levels of failure,
1:45.7	but we can't really get away from this failure, and so a key skill is being able to manage it and
1:52.9	respond to it and learn from it, and I really began by examining the capability of markets to do
1:59.1	that, and I know that's something you and your listeners will appreciate, but I was also very
2:03.8	interested in whether other organizations could do the trick, what the political obstacles to
2:10.1	learning from failure were, and even what the individual obstacles were. Although I'm not a
2:15.8	psychologist, although it's mostly an economics book, I did want to ask, why is it that you and I
	...

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