Description

Everything we know about solving the world’s problems is wrong.

Out: Plans, experts and above all, leaders.

In: Adapting – improvise rather than plan; fail, learn, and try again

In this groundbreaking new book, Tim Harford shows how the world’s most complex and important problems – including terrorism, climate change, poverty, innovation, and the financial crisis – can only be solved from the bottom up by rapid experimenting and adapting.

From a spaceport in the Mojave Desert to the street battles of Iraq, from a blazing offshore drilling rig to everyday decisions in our business and personal lives, this is a handbook for surviving – and prospering – in our complex and ever-shifting world.

Publisher Review

Tim Harford has done it again. An excellent book full of insight and surprise... I wish I had written this book -- Evan Davis Tim Harford could well be Britain's Malcolm Gladwell. An entertaining mix of popular economics and psychology, this excellently written book contains fascinating stories of success and failure that will challenge your assumptions. Insightful and clever -- Alex Bellos, Author Of Alex's Adventures In Numberland