The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success Paperback – February 24, 2015

I'm a big fan of Megan McArdle's columns and articles, so I expected to like this book -- and I did! McArdle writes very well and finds interesting topics that often, but not always, have a political or economic bent. I learned a lot from several of these chapters, particularly the one on new approaches to probation.The book is marketed as an integrated discussion of how failure can be the foundation to success (hence the title), but actually most of the chapters seem to be rewritten versions of previously published articles and are sometimes only tangentially related to the main theme. This didn't bother me because I hadn't read (or had forgotten!) most of the original articles. But a reader expecting the book to be all new material might be disappointed.There are few more typos than I'd liked to have seen, and in a couple of places the updating was skipped -- notably when a reference is made to the Bush Administration that seems to imply that he is still in office. But these are nitpicks. If you like McArdle's writing, I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy this book.

This is a book about how essential it is for us--as individuals, as businesspeople, and as citizens--to analyze, really look at, the things that don't work, or didn't work . . . in our jobs, our family lives, and in the policies our leaders pursue.Ms. McArdle does a nice job of distinguishing the mind-set about unsuccessful enterprises here in the U.S. (where having been part of a start-up, even one that no longer exists is a resume-enhancer), versus some other countries (where having seen your business go under can be a badge of shame, or the source of decades-long insolvency).The book displays the adroit weaving back-and-forth between personal and economy-wide wisdom that one can see in McArdle's columns. A charming book about the truly lifegiving aspects of "creative destruction."

If you ever wondered why entrepreneurship works in America better than any other place on earth, this book has some nice insights. The path to greatness in any society is paved via failing well in a culture that believes in forgiving and offering fresh starts.

This book broaches what most of us don't want to talk about or have part of: failure. But the idea - hence the book's title - is that failure can be a good thing if it is... er... done well. When we do well or okay, there is no real opportunity to grow and learn; it is only when we fail that we have an opportunity to learn about what we don't know and, often, the best time in which to get inventive and try new things. The Upside of Down includes many variations on this theme, including some discussion about how current instructional methods of schooling reward success only and strongly discourage failure, as well as meditations on everything from why complex systems make behavior unavoidable and why our habit of finding someone to blame gets in the way of learning from failure.The book basically starts with some thoughts akin to those of Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" (Incerto)). That is: complex systems (systems with a lot of moving parts that need to work in concert with each other) are just more prone to disorder and failure, because it only takes one thing going wrong to throw a wrench in the whole system. And, as Taleb says, error scales up quite well. From there, it depends on how we deal with error when it happens and understanding how AVOIDABLE error can be avoided. Two concepts the author provides here are "groupidity" and "blamestorming." The first of these shows us that people are likely to do stupid things when in groups (where we often do what others are doing while they do what others are doing, etc, for no better reason than it is what others are doing). Second, the author urges us to avoid "blamestorming:" when something goes wrong, we should devote attention to figuring out how to fix it and avoid it in the future, rather than the more comforting habit of finding out who is to blame.All in all, the author makes her case very indirectly through slow and meandering (very meandering) chapters, her points more implied than stated. The second chapter, for instance, is a lengthy digression on how economists Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson discovered (through economic simulations with undergrads) how bubbles and bursts form in markets from individuals acting wholly rationally. It was quite difficult to see what the point of this chapter was until the very end, where the author discussed that one of the economists' take-aways was that "good" behavior is partly contingent on good cultural norms and social institutions. And even this point only becomes obvious much later in the book where the author starts discussing what kinds of norms and institutions (easy bankruptcy laws coupled with social pressures discouraging bankruptcy) are most conducive to allowing the right kinds of failure.But the author really is a fantastic writer. Even as a relatively slow reader (I read a lot, but at a slow pace), I found myself finishing this book in a matter of days - the kind of book where I put off sleep to read another chapter. So, even though the author doesn't always tell you where she is going - you often have to read between the lines - I enjoyed the journey immensely. One part self-help book, one part collection of interesting journalistic stories and insights. It is just too bad the book wasn't structured a little better.

Worth reading, the chapters about mistakes in medicine and dealing with unemployment are particularly compelling. As Megan herself note in the acknowledgements, it does tend to read like ten 8000 word articles strung together. I would like to have seen an 11th chapter discussing differences in carefully calculated risks, properly planned for, which nevertheless cause a project to fail vs failure from reckless risk taking. Too much of the current "embrace failure" mantra coming from consultants treats the two exactly alike. Megan does not fall into this trap, but she could have done more to expose it.

The author shares some nice stories, but no real point is being made, and many loose ends are left. Disappointing, really.

Interesting book some interesting and thought provoking idea

I know her work as a Bloomberg scribbler and was not dissapointed with this book. She's a fine writer with quite a fine message. To hell with golden-CV robots that can do no wrong (or so they claim). This book regards itself with the rest of us, encouraging us to embrace our shortcomings and use them to our advantage.

Thought provoking book on risk, learning, entrepreneurship. Both in business and in life, doing the same things the same way in a world in which change is the only constant is not great strategy. This book analyzes some of the research as to the relationship among risk, failing well, and innovation are related.

Seems to succeed one must postpone gratification and deal with suffering. This book deals with tough subjects and a glimpse at choosing paths that most would avoid as they are not popular or easy.