How Big Things Get Done

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 SlowA wise, vivid and unforgettable combination of inspiring storytelling with decades of practical research and experience – Tim Harford, bestselling author of How to Make the World Add UpEntertaining … compelling … there are lessons here for managers of all stripes * The Economist *Full of delicious anecdotes about project management disasters … Flyvbjerg and co-author Gardner succeed in extracting valuable lessons from these failures – and some occasional successes – Financial Times, ‘FT business books: What to read this month’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 Olympic Games to the renovation of your dog house – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, and author of The Black SwanMy only complaint about this book is that it wasn’t written earlier. It distils decades of systematic research from thousands of projects. The result is a crystal-clear pattern of surprising reasons why almost all big human projects fail to deliver as expected – Ola Rosling, bestselling co-author of FactfulnessThe best scientific advice on project planning. 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 – Philip Tetlock, bestselling co-author of SuperforecastingA truly fascinating read. There’s a practical pay-off, too: a toolbox with eleven smart heuristics for better project leadership that every planner should know – Gerd Gigerenzer, author of Gut Feelings

Bent Flyvbjerg is a professor at Oxford University, an economist, and ‘the world’s leading megaproject expert’, according to global accounting network KPMG. He has consulted on over one hundred projects costing $1 billion or more and has been knighted by the Queen of Denmark.

Dan Gardner is a journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of Risk, Future Babble and Superforecasting (with Philip E. Tetlock).