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Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design
Design pervades our lives. Everything from drafting a PowerPoint presentation to planning a state-of-the-art bridge embodies this universal human activity. But what makes a great design? In this compelling and wide-ranging look at the essence of invention, distinguished engineer and author Henry Petroski argues that, time and again, we have built success on the back of failure--not through easy imitation of success.
Success through Failure shows us that making something better--by carefully anticipating and thus averting failure--is what invention and design are all about. Petroski explores the nature of invention and the character of the inventor through an unprecedented range of both everyday and extraordinary examples--illustrated lectures, child-resistant packaging for drugs, national constitutions, medical devices, the world's tallest skyscrapers, long-span bridges, and more. Stressing throughout that there is no surer road to eventual failure than modeling designs solely on past successes, he sheds new light on spectacular failures, from the destruction of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 and the space shuttle disasters of recent decades, to the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001.
Petroski also looks at the prehistoric and ancient roots of many modern designs. The historical record, especially as embodied in failures, reveals patterns of human social behavior that have implications for large structures like bridges and vast organizations like NASA. Success through Failure --which will fascinate anyone intrigued by design, including engineers, architects, and designers themselves--concludes by speculating on when we can expect the next major bridge failure to occur, and the kind of bridge most likely to be involved.
Success through Failure shows us that making something better--by carefully anticipating and thus averting failure--is what invention and design are all about. Petroski explores the nature of invention and the character of the inventor through an unprecedented range of both everyday and extraordinary examples--illustrated lectures, child-resistant packaging for drugs, national constitutions, medical devices, the world's tallest skyscrapers, long-span bridges, and more. Stressing throughout that there is no surer road to eventual failure than modeling designs solely on past successes, he sheds new light on spectacular failures, from the destruction of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 and the space shuttle disasters of recent decades, to the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001.
Petroski also looks at the prehistoric and ancient roots of many modern designs. The historical record, especially as embodied in failures, reveals patterns of human social behavior that have implications for large structures like bridges and vast organizations like NASA. Success through Failure --which will fascinate anyone intrigued by design, including engineers, architects, and designers themselves--concludes by speculating on when we can expect the next major bridge failure to occur, and the kind of bridge most likely to be involved.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
36 people are currently reading
636 people want to read
About the author
Henry Petroski
33 books259 followersHenry Petroski was an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he was also a prolific author.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
March 18, 2018
"Failure and responses to it may not explain every aspect of every design, but from the engineering perspective of this book it is presented as a unifying theme for describing the functional evolution of things. "(9)
"Complex collections of things and our manipulation of and interaction with them are termed systems, which themselves are designed. We are embedded in systems of all kinds, some of which are obviously mechanical or electronic but many of which are also social and cultural. But as much as things change, what drives that change remains essentially the same. It follows that any specific thing or system illustrates the nature of design."(43)
"Innovation requires that you go beyond the known into the unknown, where there might be trap doors and blind alleys..... The quicker more mistakes are made, the quicker the maze is mapped."(65)
" Even the absence of a hardware vulnerability does not mean that the operation of a system is without risk. MRI testing is believed to be virtually perfectly safe, but under certain circumstances it can be deadly. Because of the strong electromagnet incorporated into the ten-ton machine, metal objects of all kinds are supposed to be absent from the examining room. ... And a boy being tested was killed when an oxygen tank, which for unknown reasons had been brought into the room, was pulled into the center of the machine and fractured his skull. Hospitals can be risky places, where seemingly the best-designed engines can surprise their engineers. "(94)
" No number of historic successes ever provides absolute insurance against future failure. Maker and user, let alone middleman, can have different expectations of what constitutes acceptable performance. Dissatisfied customers are thus the source of important feedback on designs to manufacturers."(107)
"Ironically, what limits the height of skyscrapers is not structural but mechanical. As buildings rise higher and higher, more and more elevators must be provided."(125) It was around the late 1920's that the Empire State Building was built, to be the tallest building with the largest amount of office space available. We also had the Tacoma Narrows bridge, with its failure mostly attributed to part of its name- it was too narrow.
Conclusion- "Given the faults of human nature, coupled with the complexity of the design of everything, from lectures to bridges, it behooves us to beware of the lure of success and to listen to the lessons of failure."(194)
"Complex collections of things and our manipulation of and interaction with them are termed systems, which themselves are designed. We are embedded in systems of all kinds, some of which are obviously mechanical or electronic but many of which are also social and cultural. But as much as things change, what drives that change remains essentially the same. It follows that any specific thing or system illustrates the nature of design."(43)
"Innovation requires that you go beyond the known into the unknown, where there might be trap doors and blind alleys..... The quicker more mistakes are made, the quicker the maze is mapped."(65)
" Even the absence of a hardware vulnerability does not mean that the operation of a system is without risk. MRI testing is believed to be virtually perfectly safe, but under certain circumstances it can be deadly. Because of the strong electromagnet incorporated into the ten-ton machine, metal objects of all kinds are supposed to be absent from the examining room. ... And a boy being tested was killed when an oxygen tank, which for unknown reasons had been brought into the room, was pulled into the center of the machine and fractured his skull. Hospitals can be risky places, where seemingly the best-designed engines can surprise their engineers. "(94)
" No number of historic successes ever provides absolute insurance against future failure. Maker and user, let alone middleman, can have different expectations of what constitutes acceptable performance. Dissatisfied customers are thus the source of important feedback on designs to manufacturers."(107)
"Ironically, what limits the height of skyscrapers is not structural but mechanical. As buildings rise higher and higher, more and more elevators must be provided."(125) It was around the late 1920's that the Empire State Building was built, to be the tallest building with the largest amount of office space available. We also had the Tacoma Narrows bridge, with its failure mostly attributed to part of its name- it was too narrow.
Conclusion- "Given the faults of human nature, coupled with the complexity of the design of everything, from lectures to bridges, it behooves us to beware of the lure of success and to listen to the lessons of failure."(194)
October 2, 2022
I haven't much experience of engineering, but I totally see Henry Petroski's sage advice that "Past successes, no matter how numerous and universal, are no guarantee of future performance in a new context" and "No number of historic successes ever provides absolute insurance against future failure."
My engineering experience is limited to attaching a miniature basketball hoop onto my bedroom door when I was seven years old. All I had to do was peel back a piece of small plastic covering a sticky tab, which I pressed against my door. Lo and behold, it remained in that untouched position for years. One random night, I was woke up by the sound of a soft thud. As I turned over in my bed, rubbing my tired eyes, I couldn't believe the sight of my poor basketball loop sitting on my floor. Obviously, I blamed the object itself for its weaknesses as opposed to my sticking skills years earlier. But, I'm sure if I conducted a failure analysis all those years ago, it would still be there on the back of my bedroom door to this day. After trying to stick the basketball hoop on my door again, it would fall off every day, until I finally gave up. It appears as though when something fails, it fails catastrophically after years of seeming robustness.
I can tell this book is written by an engineer, because there are an inordinate amount of bridge references and long descriptions of structural measurements that got rather tedious and caused my attention to wane. Nevertheless, there were insightful remarks throughout, and the proposed approach to design is a valid and purposeful one.
My engineering experience is limited to attaching a miniature basketball hoop onto my bedroom door when I was seven years old. All I had to do was peel back a piece of small plastic covering a sticky tab, which I pressed against my door. Lo and behold, it remained in that untouched position for years. One random night, I was woke up by the sound of a soft thud. As I turned over in my bed, rubbing my tired eyes, I couldn't believe the sight of my poor basketball loop sitting on my floor. Obviously, I blamed the object itself for its weaknesses as opposed to my sticking skills years earlier. But, I'm sure if I conducted a failure analysis all those years ago, it would still be there on the back of my bedroom door to this day. After trying to stick the basketball hoop on my door again, it would fall off every day, until I finally gave up. It appears as though when something fails, it fails catastrophically after years of seeming robustness.
I can tell this book is written by an engineer, because there are an inordinate amount of bridge references and long descriptions of structural measurements that got rather tedious and caused my attention to wane. Nevertheless, there were insightful remarks throughout, and the proposed approach to design is a valid and purposeful one.
April 27, 2025
Most of the book is dedicated to the thesis that engineers push their designs to the limit until failure, and that it is the failure that pushes them to develop new solutions and to reach new heights. A good engineer is then someone that proactively anticipates failures (and learns from historical failures) and accounts for them in his designs.
Most of the book considers this principle in different contexts and from different perspectives, which is enlightening.
Near the end, the author discusses a phenomenon where a major bridge failure occurs once every thirty years. The time length is explained as being the amount of time it takes for a new generation of engineers to mature. The author connects this fact to a similar thesis in literature, which states that a new genre of novels supplants the old one in thirty year periods, the time it takes for a new generation of novelists to mature.
This refers to the dynamics of the evolution of knowledge, the loss of 'complicated' methods in favor of simpler ones. Petroski's thoughts on the topic are incredibly interesting, but unfortunately the book stops short of discussing it in depth.
Most of the book considers this principle in different contexts and from different perspectives, which is enlightening.
Near the end, the author discusses a phenomenon where a major bridge failure occurs once every thirty years. The time length is explained as being the amount of time it takes for a new generation of engineers to mature. The author connects this fact to a similar thesis in literature, which states that a new genre of novels supplants the old one in thirty year periods, the time it takes for a new generation of novelists to mature.
This refers to the dynamics of the evolution of knowledge, the loss of 'complicated' methods in favor of simpler ones. Petroski's thoughts on the topic are incredibly interesting, but unfortunately the book stops short of discussing it in depth.
May 16, 2018
"Success Through Failure" by Henry Petroski is a book that gave me a deeper look into the history of humanity and how things come to be. The book sums up some huge inventions in human history and how they evolved from failure as well as how we adapted in the wild. It also shows how we as a species depended on failure and how we still do. If you want to get into engineering or anything like that I definitely recommend this book. Even if you don't plan on becoming a job in the creative field this book could be applied to anything so you still should read it.
December 13, 2020
An extremely interesting book about how analyzing past failures contributes to the success of current products. I loved how in-depth the book went into the history of how products failed and through small incremental changes the product later evolved into something almost unrecognizable. It also had some great examples, advice, and quotes in it. Then I enjoyed the entire message of the book, which was how we should not be afraid of failure, but instead, see them as great learning opportunities.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 13, 2022
Beginning of each chapter is rough as are some personal examples, but following the history of a single technology's evolution through cycles of failure and success is where this book shines. Read the last two pages to get the authors main takeaway. In essence, radical advances in technology AND complacency in extending existing successes are both common causes of failure. Failure is one of the best catalysts for innovation and learning and highly valuable in itself.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 9, 2018
I can understand why a lot of kids don't like summer reading. If my love of reading wasn't already established, then I can see why someone my age would think all books are like this and decide not to pick up another one.
June 23, 2019
The summary on the sleeve of the book already describes my take away - Henry Petroski argues that, time and again, we have build success on the back of failure - not through easy imitation of success.
In other words, learning happens on failure.
In other words, learning happens on failure.
July 30, 2017
Well researched and informative read. If more pictures were included, the case studies would have been more easier to understand
January 30, 2022
Professor Petroski has written several better books on the same general theme: that engineering advances are driven by and informed by failure.
July 8, 2022
A very enlightening discussion on how we can harness lessons from failure to create robust, long-lasting, successful designs.
September 28, 2022
The book is sometimes repetitive and case studies are hard to understand due to the lack of images provided. The message of the book is in the title.
March 31, 2022
Great book! Petroski has a deep historical knowledge of engineering and engineering systems, I would give this book to any structural or civil engineer who likes a little history.
July 29, 2012
Petroski does a good job in presenting the design paradigm that advancements are made through the challenge of failure. It's especially appreciated that he takes the time to define "failure" beyond the traditional understanding of the term and to show that there is not necessarily someone at fault behind all cases of failure.
It took a bit to grasp where he was going with his magic lantern case study and I do wish that he goes into a bit more technical detail in his others, however this book is a good introduction for the average layman into the typical engineering design process. An updated edition with the recent Fukushia Daiichi nuclear disaster as a case study would probably help appeal to readers more.
It took a bit to grasp where he was going with his magic lantern case study and I do wish that he goes into a bit more technical detail in his others, however this book is a good introduction for the average layman into the typical engineering design process. An updated edition with the recent Fukushia Daiichi nuclear disaster as a case study would probably help appeal to readers more.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 30, 2011
If my linkedin profile ever barfs up that amazon reading list thing I'll paste my comments from there here.
Otherwise, one of the bummers of this book is Petroski mis-selects the Millennium bridge in England as the 'thirty year' failure cycle example. Another few months and he'd have the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis to point at, although that was more maintenance / crack propagation underestimate / construction loads than some kind of design flaw--despite what the "experts" may say.
--Brian.
Otherwise, one of the bummers of this book is Petroski mis-selects the Millennium bridge in England as the 'thirty year' failure cycle example. Another few months and he'd have the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis to point at, although that was more maintenance / crack propagation underestimate / construction loads than some kind of design flaw--despite what the "experts" may say.
--Brian.
August 17, 2015
Better than Small Things Considered because Petroski doesn't beat you over the head with his theme but very similar to To Engineer Is Human with more current content. As a media services geek, I REALLY loved the first chapter on the evolution of presentations from overhead transparencies to PowerPoint, but I'll admit that's a niche interest. Overall, a good book, but hard to evaluate after reading so many similar books by the same author.
April 7, 2008
I found out about this book through HBS Online's weekly podcast. I bought it and began to read. What I found was less than what I expected from a book with such a good review from HBS and with such a great title. This is the version that engineers would appreciate. I would like a version geared toward business. Not a great book.
March 13, 2009
The chapter about the progress of the lecture from slide lanterns to Powerpoint is exceptionally dull, but the rest of this book is worth checking out if you're interested in the process behind building things to greater heights both literally and figuratively. However, at the end of the day I found Petroski's writing style to be average at best. It was a little disappointing given my high hopes.
December 15, 2007
we learn a lot about design from failures more so than through successes.
December 31, 2008
Not my favorite Petroski
March 1, 2010
Fail early and learn from it. The best design approach is to focus on failure and try to minimize it rather than going for the gold.
Want to read
July 28, 2010As heard on the Science Times podcast.
Are disasters necessary?
Are disasters necessary?
Read
July 31, 2011Very entertaining and insightful - reminded me of Nicholson Baker's essays in 'The Size of Thoughts' - look forward to reading 'The Pencil' and 'The Toothpick' next.
March 30, 2013
A must-read book on product design for knowledge workers and entrepreneurs.
September 21, 2013
Petroski's writing is easy, well-researched, and makes you think. This book is no exception.
January 30, 2014
My thoughts on this one are here:
http://twwarch.wordpress.com/2014/01/...
http://twwarch.wordpress.com/2014/01/...
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews