Popular Science Review - Why Most Things Fail

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Review - Why Most Things Fail - Paul Ormerod

This is a book about economics, but don't switch off right away - it's a popular science book too, and takes a very different view of the economic/business world. It wouldn't hurt to have an interest in business, but it's not essential.

Along the way, Paul Ormerod draws fascinating parallels between the natural world and economics, showing how concepts like evolution and extinction might apply to companies - but also how there are very significant differences due to the way companies can "evolve" much, much quicker than biological evolution.

In some ways, there's a message here that Ormerod probably didn't intend - that economics isn't a developed enough subject to be awarded a Nobel Prize! While it's true that in a subject like physics, theories will change, if you look back over the Nobel prizes awarded in the field. most of them are for work that is still valid. By contrast, Ormerod points out that many economics Nobel prizes are for work that seems to have no validity in the real world whatsoever. Some of the key assumptions in economics - the existence of an imaginary stable state towards which things are tending, for instance, seem fatally flawed.

At it's heart, the book spends a lot of time telling us why economics won't work. The type of events we're working with aren't susceptible to planning and forecasting. In fact, the main message of this book seems to be that detailed planning in business is a waste of time - it's much better to be innovative and flexible, trying out new things, experimenting and prototyping, being prepared to change direction easily and fluidly. In fact pretty well the entire opposite of what, for instance, government usually does. It's quite amazing how much stick a government will get for changing direction when you consider that - if Ormerod's right - this is an essential for survival.

On the whole it's a good book, mostly easy to read. It only gets three stars because the science is a little peripheral, and there really isn't much content - it's mostly about what isn't true or doesn't work. Ormerod's style occasionally tends to the smug, and US readers might find it a little over-emphatically British (work with him guys, it's worth the effort), but that shouldn't stop it being read. It's essential reading for anyone involved in economics, finance or politics, and for the rest of us is a great counter to the apparent wisdom of what Ormerod makes clear are often prophets of guesswork.

Also in paperback from 2006:

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

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