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    Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
    Unavailable
    Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
    Unavailable
    Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
    Ebook341 pages5 hours

    Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics

    By Paul Ormerod

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    With the same originality and astuteness that marked his widely praised Butterfly Economics, Paul Ormerod now examines the “Iron Law of Failure” as it applies to business and government–and explains what can be done about it.

    “Failure is all around us,” asserts Ormerod. For every General Electric–still going strong after more than one hundred years–there are dozens of businesses like Central Leather, which was one of the world’s largest companies in 1912 but was liquidated in 1952. Ormerod debunks conventional economic theory–that the world economy ticks along in perfect equilibrium according to the best-laid plans of business and government–and delves into the reasons for the failure of brands, entire companies, and public policies. Inspired by recent advances in evolutionary theory and biology, Ormerod illuminates the ways in which companies and policy-setting sectors of government behave much like living organisms: unless they evolve, they die. But he also makes clear how desirable social and economic outcomes may be achieved when individuals, companies and governments adapt in response to the actual behavior and requirements of their customers and constituents.

    Why Most Things Fail is a fascinating and provocative study of a truth all too seldom acknowledged.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateDec 18, 2007
    ISBN9780307430236
    Unavailable
    Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics

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    Reviews for Why Most Things Fail

    3.5/5

    32 ratings2 reviews

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    • 2/5
      For me, the only thing of value in the book was in two lines in the introduction: "The book's content is firmly grounded in reality. Too much work in the social sciences, whether it is the dense mathematics of much of economics, or the tortuous prose of a great deal of sociology, is purely theoretical "

      "...tortuous prose..." Spot on and so appropriate. The less precise or rigorous the proposition, the more cryptic the language used to describe it.

      Mr. Ormerod was blind to his own tortuous prose. And the "things" that fail? Businesses. Economics. Nothing else. And nothing new to tell on that front, except perhaps a new packaging of a collection of historical data.
    • 4/5
      I have to say at the outset that this book is not what I was expecting. Rather than a light and frothy pop-culture look at business failure, it was a detailed and analytical economic treatise on business extinctions over time. A little dense in places, this was still a fascinating book, all the more so for being so essentially scholarly. If you're interested in the patterns behind business failure, this book is a must-read.