Why Success Always Starts with Failure

Success, in William James phrase, "demands strange sacrifices from those who worship her." In today's complex times, one of those sacrifices is the ability to be willing to fail. Someone deep in the corporate world once said to me in response to a question about lack of performance, that “you can get into a lot of trouble by not doing anything, but you can get into more trouble by doing something.” The fact is, that in today high speed, high touch, high complexity world, that will not do. To counter this, we need not be afraid of the new or be afraid to fail. Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist at the Financial Times, lays it all out in his new book Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure. My conversation with Tim Harford: var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}