How Big Things Get Done

Having researched the properties of planning errors, I am confident that nobody has studied the topic more broadly and deeply than Bent Flyvbjerg. His focus ranges from the Olympic Games to the renovation of your doghouse. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, distinguished professor of risk engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and author of the Incerto series A wise, vivid, and unforgettable combination of inspiring storytelling with decades of practical research and experience . . . Everyone who deals with large projects is already desperate to read this book. The rest of us will take great pleasure in learning from it anyway. -Tim Harford, author of The Data Detective This book distills the best scientific advice on planning big projects. And it is arguably the bargain of the century. For a few dollars you can tap into thousands of dollars of insights in executive-education classrooms-and if you happen to be a CEO or head of state, the savings will quickly run into the billions. -Philip Tetlock, co-author of Superforecasting My only complaint about this book is that it wasn't written earlier. Finally, here's a guide to navigating the embarrassingly predictable mistakes we all tend to make when taking on life's biggest and most important projects. Unlike so many other books from self-proclaimed business gurus, How Big Things Get Done is not based on mere anecdotes; it distills decades of systematic research from more than sixteen thousand projects worldwide. The result is a crystal-clear pattern of surprising reasons why almost all big human projects fail to deliver as expected-and a road map for the book's lucky readers to avoid them. -Ola Rosling, CEO and co-founder, Gapminder; co-author of Factfulness If we're to make it through these next few decades, we're going to have to build a lot of stuff-and we're going to have to do it cheaply and fast. Here's a very useful handbook! -Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon Flyvbjerg's study of big construction projects worldwide has led him to formulate the iron law of megaprojects: over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again. His deep understanding of why big projects fail-and occasionally succeed-makes this book a truly fascinating read. There's a practical payoff, too: a toolbox with eleven smart heuristics for better project leadership that every planner who wants to succeed should know. -Gerd Gigerenzer, author of Gut Feelings This book is important, timely, instructive, and entertaining. What more could you ask for? -Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow