I’m still trying to figure out if reading Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford was worth the time. It’s a good book with quality insights, but I’m not sure those insights taught me anything I didn’t already know.

The premise of the book is that solving complex problems takes adaptability as we learn new things. The world is wildly complex and we cannot solve our problems by placing hope in finding a great leader. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we can’t fully predict the impact of our decisions on complex issues. So instead we need to learn to adapt as new information comes our way. And we’re best off having a decentralized approach to problem solving, placing a lot of little bets so we can figure out what works and what doesn’t.

The book actually says a lot more than that, and it has compelling arguments. Harford is a good story teller. But as I look back on the book I realize he’s actually taken a lot of perspectives from other writers and brought them together into a cohesive plan. That’s admirable and extremely helpful, but not particularly groundbreaking.

The bottom line is that this is a good book with helpful insights. Well worth reading for somebody who isn’t an avid reader of books about business, leadership, management, or human psychology. I read a lot of those books, so the ideas that Harford presented all felt like restatements to me.