Disruption Games: How to Thrive on Serial Failure

by Trond Arne Undheim

Common wisdom says that success breeds success, indeed this is how most VCs pick startups, businesses select talent, and singles search for dates. In contrast, the evidence from science to startups shows that only repeated failure breeds success.

In Disruption Games, futurist Trond Arne Undheim reveals how companies (and individuals) can build a successful, multi-faceted innovation portfolio and may experience deep learning from failed initiatives.

Over the next few years, successfully managing failure will become a necessary growth strategy for any individual, firm or collective. Are you prepared?
Disruption Games fulfills the need for actionable insight on what’s truly driving change and how to become a change-maker, not just affected by it.
The book will:

-Transform your view of failure–it is highly valuable 21st century training
-Help you build an attractive innovation portfolio (as a person or a company)
-Share personal experience from taking risks, losing, winning, and recovering

226 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2020

About the author

I write about how humans navigate technology—on factory floors, in boardrooms, and in near-future worlds that might be closer than we think.

My nonfiction work includes The Platinum Workforce: How to Train and Hire for the 21st Century’s Industrial Transitions (Anthem Press, 2025) and Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations (Wiley, 2022), drawing on research at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and my time as Director of MIT Startup Exchange, where I connected over 1,000 startups with 250 corporations.

I'm also developing a literary science-fiction thriller—a high-concept, deeply human story grounded in cutting-edge science, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and network sociology. It explores what happens when technological systems begin to press against the edges of human agency, judgment, and meaning.

Host of the Futurized podcast (500+ episodes). Former Research Scholar, Stanford CISAC (2022–2024). I hold a PhD on the future of work and technology. Based outside Boston, MA.

Reviews

[BooksCoffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The former director of MIT Startup Exchange based outside of Boston, MA and a writer for Fortune and Cognoscenti, Undheim returns with this eye-opening guide which examines how focusing on failed initiatives can help companies to build a successful portfolio in the long run.

He offers strategies for developing an effective business model—even though most startups and new products fail, individuals and corporate executives can examine repeated failures to recognize the root cause of failures—and creates a multi-faceted innovation portfolio.

The epigraph at the beginning of each chapter adds heft to the text’s implicit message, and the accompanied charts and diagrams enhance its accessibility. Undheim cites such companies as Nokia, Oracle, Coca Cola, Jaguar Land Rover among others to illustrate his points. His ideas are solid and his writing clear and specific.

Readers will come away from this insightful read solely satisfied.

[Jody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic read during quarantine. We are in disruptive times, and who knows what the world looks like when we come out of this? We are all facing so much uncertainty, and the story changes hour by hour, never consistently. What is considered 'normal' changes too, and how you think about things determines how you feel, and how you feel determines how you act. Actions create consequences and outcomes. How do you think, feel, and act in a world that hardly resembles what we had when we went into this?

Now, more than ever, we need to think outside the box. The world has changed, there is no going back to before COVID, so why would we continue to work and think the same way?

How do you think in a new way? How do you challenge the status quo? How do you create real change, and inspire people to change with you?

Read this, build your brain, and be ready for the new world.

[Dora Okeyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book right here is the permission anyone needs to fail. I love how the author by using case studies and examples, highlights that innovation is not a one moment finding but something that involves repetitive processes refined over time.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC. Anyone interested in start ups would enjoy reading this book and learn a thing or two as well.

[Øyvind Håbrekke]

A really interesting read based on experience and reflection. You will not regret spending a few hours on this book.