The SQUEEZE: Today’s financial, economical, and health challenges cannot be solved with traditional “ready-made” solutions. Instead, these challenges require many to solve the problems in their lives by learning how to adapt. Tim Harford’s book titled Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure is a poignant look at the profoundly complex nature of failure and suggests the importance of tackling issues through adaptive trial and error. For example, issues such as navigating through climate change, overcoming poverty, and rebuilding from financial crises are altogether candidates for applying the concept of adapting and fostering innovation and creativity through failure. Harford weaves together multiple disciplines, making a passionate case for surviving, prospering, and turning failure into success in an ever-changing, ever-shifting world.

Notable Endorsement: “[Harford] offers a very useful guide for people preparing to live in the world as it really is.” — David Brooks, The New York Times

Common Q’s Answered by this Book:

• How does failure provide insight into navigating through success?
• What are examples of some profoundly complex problems that are prerequisites for victory?
• How do ready-made solutions hinder innovation and creativity?

About the Author: Tim Harford is the author of two bestsellers: The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life. Harford is a member of the editorial board of the Financial Times, where he writes the "Dear Economist" column. Harford is a regular contributor to Slate, Forbes, and NPR's Marketplace. Harford once served as the host of the BBC TV series Trust Me, I'm an Economist and now provides insight for the BBC series More or Less. Harford has been an economist at the World Bank and an economics tutor at Oxford University. For more information, visit: http://timharford.com/books/adapt/.

Book Vitals:

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (May 2011)

Accolades:

• Bloomberg Business Book of the Year, 2011

Leadership Book of the Year, 2011 in the Axion Business Book Awards