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Why Societies — and Startups — Collapse
In his terrific new book, Collapse, science writer Jared Diamond examines some of the most famous failed civilizations of prehistory and history, from Easter Islanders and the Anasazi of New Mexico to the Viking settlers of Greenland. I bought the book because I found the subtitle intriguing: How Societies Choose to Fail. I had never considered the possibility that they had a choice in the matter, but it turns out they do.Diamond concludes that societies collapse when they fall on hard times and make one or more of four fundamental mistakes:
- They fail to anticipate problems.
- They don’t respond promptly when problems arrive.
- They exhibit something he calls “bad” rational behavior.
- liThey adopt “disastrous values.”
I don’t know about you, but I think this is a pretty good list for business failure, too. Businesspeople, especially entrepreneurs, are optimistic folks. We don’t like to spend a lot of time dwelling on bad things that might happen. It brings people down. Besides, most of the problems we see coming often veer off the road before they get to us anyway, right?
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CareerNiche on May 2nd, 2005 8:01 am
Why businesses fail?
As an entrepreneur, you never want to think about he fact that you might fail. Sure, you have your exit strategy carefully planned, but failure is just not an option. …until it suddenly walks up and slap you in the
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