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    Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design
    Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design
    Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design
    Ebook272 pages2 hours

    Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design

    By Henry Petroski

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    From the acclaimed author and engineer, an engaging and lively account of the surprising secret of great 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateMay 22, 2018
    ISBN9781400889686
    Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design

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    3.5/5

    17 ratings2 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Good title, but the rest of the book was a failure for me.I had assumed it would advance a thesis with many examples about how success had emerged from failure. It's actually more about technology history and engineering, a loosely-connected set of chapters based on some talks he did.Although I'm usually interested in a lot of obscure information, the author's writing style generally didn't engage me."The evolution of a few technologies: From presentations to bridges" would have been a more accurate title.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I was expecting an exploration of the role of failure in improving designs and how to apply the lessons we learn when we don't succeed. The amount of discussion on failure itself in this book could be condensed into a pamphlet. Instead, the author devotes the first chapter to the evolution of Powerpoint, starting with cave paintings, and numerous examples of failed structures with a paragraph or two following each example essentially saying "and they learned not to do that again". I would recommend this book for people looking for examples to support their own research into failure, but don't expect to come away from this with any new insight.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Success through Failure - Henry Petroski

    SUCCESS THROUGH FAILURE

    The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure

    The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors:

    A Tale of Architectural Choice and Craftsmanship

    To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure

    An Engineer’s Alphabet: Gleanings from the Softer Side of a Profession

    The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems

    The Toothpick: Technology and Culture

    Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering

    Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design

    Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design

    Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer

    The Book on the Bookshelf

    Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering

    Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing

    Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America

    Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering

    The Evolution of Useful Things

    The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance

    Beyond Engineering: Essays and Other Attempts to Figure without Equations

    To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design

    SUCCESS THROUGH FAILURE

    The Paradox of Design

    With a new preface by the author

    Henry Petroski

    PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford

    Copyright © 2006 by Henry Petroski

    New Princeton Science Library edition, with a new preface by the author, copyright © 2018 by Henry Petroski

    Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press

    Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

    In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

    All Rights Reserved

    Library of Congress Control Number: 2017961434

    First printing, 2006

    First paperback printing, 2008

    First Princeton Science Library paperback printing, 2018

    New preface by the author, 2018

    New paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-18099-1

    Cover images courtesy of iStock, cover design by Michael Boland for thebolanddesignco.com

    British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

    Small portions of this material appeared first in American Scientist, Harvard Business Review, and the Washington Post Book World

    This book has been composed in Adobe Caslon and Helvetica Neue

    Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

    press.princeton.edu

    Printed in the United States of America

    1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

    To Karen

    CONTENTS

    Preface to the Princeton Science Library Edition ix

    Preface to the Original Edition xv

    Introduction 1

    1. From Plato’s Cave to PowerPoint 10

    2. Success and Failure in Design 44

    3. Intangible Things 81

    4. Things Small and Large 97

    5. Building on Success 116

    6. Stepping-stones to Super-spans 139

    7. The Historical Future 163

    Notes 195

    Index 219

    PREFACE TO THE PRINCETON SCIENCE LIBRARY EDITION

    In the dozen years since this book was first published, there have been some notable structural failures, bookended by the collapse of two major interstate highway bridges: in 2007 the steel truss carrying I-35W across the Mississippi River at Minneapolis, and in 2017 the concrete viaduct carrying I-85 through northeast Atlanta. Neither of these incidents, each of which was ultimately traced to human ignorance, error, carelessness, and irresponsibility, provides a counterexample to the hypothesis about failure implicit in the title Success through Failure. Indeed, they reinforce the existence of the paradox of design that prolonged success breeds hubris, which leads to failure; and that incontrovertible failure, followed by study, understanding, and lessons learned leads to renewed success.

    Although collapsed bridges and their analysis have provided highly visible examples supporting the existence of a cycle of success and failure that has plagued the genre for centuries—if not millennia—other kinds of prominent failures have also lent credence to the interplay between success and failure in human endeavors. Among the most prominent and tragic in recent years was the deadly fire that in 2017 engulfed the London high-rise apartment building known as Grenfell Tower. The rapid spread of the conflagration was traced to the use of composite sandwich panels consisting of a polyurethane core between sheets of aluminum to clad the aging building in an inexpensive but cosmetically attractive façade. In spite of its use being known to be ill-advised, the widespread successful use elsewhere of the attractive and relatively inexpensive cladding system was thought to outweigh the risk—until Grenfell showed the risk to be unacceptable.

    Tragedies associated with one-off structures like bridges and buildings may provide the most dramatic examples of success leading to complacency leading to hubris leading to failure, but the same misguided human behavior of designers has often been exhibited in mass-produced consumer products. Manufacturers who rightly earn a reputation for creativity through innovative gadgets understandably wish to capitalize on their successes with new and improved models, if not revolutionary devices. Indeed, innovative technologies, epitomized perhaps by Apple’s iPhone (introduced in 2007) and iPad (in 2010), have transformed the way we communicate. But the rapid updating of successful models and premature introduction of new products does run the risk of having to take a step or two backward.

    This happened with Apple’s iPhone 6, which was introduced in 2014. It perhaps epitomized the rapid pace of ballyhooing that iterated versions of the smart phone exhibited with new and improved features nearly every year. Unfortunately, the iPhone 6 had reception problems that proved to be an embarrassment and somewhat of a setback for the device’s manufacturer. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7, introduced in 2016, brought similar pause for its manufacturer when the latest edition had a propensity to catch fire. The incidence of such transient failures may be small in the big scheme of things, but their impact can be a game changer.

    Some consumer products might fail to be competitive not for technical reasons but due to the competition’s better marketing savvy backed by big bucks. The classic example is, of course, from around 1980, when the superior Betamax lost out to the less expensive and more widely adopted Video Home System, whose abbreviation VHS became synonymous with the format used in the video cassette recorder, or VCR. More recently, Barnes and Noble’s e-book reader known as Nook, introduced in 2009, could not hold a candle to Amazon’s Kindle, which dates from 2007.

    Failed products are certainly nothing new; the patent literature is littered with the often laughable ideas from times past that did not even make it to the marketplace. These new, useful, and nonobvious inventions—to allude to the official criteria for a patentable concept—were once some inventor or engineer’s promising brainstorm. Some even were incorporated into a highly successful manufacturer’s suite of products. But success in making and selling one thing does not guarantee equal or any success with a seemingly closely related but slightly off-key product. Just as inventors can fool themselves and patent examiners into believing their new idea is the best thing since sliced bread, so manufacturers of widgets can trick themselves into thinking a widget with a twist can expand their market share.

    New Coke, introduced in April 1985, was soon recognized to be a mistake, and the original formula was brought back within three months. The ill-advised replacement for the beloved soft drink with an asserted improvement was the epitome of misguided design, marketing, and management thinking. Today, the cookie aisle in supermarkets displays and regularly presents other examples of this phenomenon. It used to be that an Oreo was a white-and-black concoction of a confection consisting of schmear of sugary crème filling between a pair of chocolate crackers; now it is hard to find that product among all the hopeful twist- and spin-offs from it. Among the most embarrassing was the Watermelon Oreo, consisting of red and green half slices of a watermelon flavor creme filling sandwiched between vanilla crackers imprinted with the name Oreo. The product was introduced in 2013 as a limited edition item and declared a failure shortly thereafter.

    Such failures form the basis of the collection of the Museum of Failure, which opened in 2017 in downtown Helsingborg, Sweden. Among the hoped-for successes on display, in addition to such classics as New Coke and the Sony Betamax, is the Apple Newton personal digital assistant (PDA) featuring handwriting recognition, which may have been ahead of its time when released in 1993. Other failures in the Museum of Failure include the Bic for Her, a misguided attempt to assign a gender to a fundamentally genderless object, and Harley-Davidson Perfume, a scent associated with a revered brand name more commonly associated with noise and exhaust.

    Whether in small consumer products or in large public works, examples of the cycle ranging over the crests of success through the troughs of failure and exhibiting the paradox of design are legion, and the basic premise of the hypothesis and paradox remain unchallenged by the never-ending evolution of things generally. Thus, this book needs no revision to be reissued as a declaration of the way things that have been, are, and will be can be expected to change for the better and the worse.

    Especially these days, when the biggest and costliest man-made things and systems of all—collectively termed the infrastructure—are becoming increasingly described not as marvels but as albatrosses, it behooves us all to realize the convoluted interrelationships between success and failure, between the permanent and the transient. The voracious appetites of steel and concrete structures for paint, repair, and maintenance generally call for us to understand how their success and failure rely upon the paradox of design. It behooves everyone—from citizens to engineers to politicians—to understand the limitations of human ingenuity and fiscal resources to remember the lessons of failures of the past and to build and rebuild with a renewed sense of getting it right.

    The road to success necessarily passes through a field littered with the lessons of failures. Whether the lessons are illustrated with examples from small gadgets or large structures, they share a unifying principle that I have chosen to call a paradox summed up in the ambiguous phrase and title, success through failure.

    H.P.

    Arrowsic, Maine

    Summer 2017

    PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

    This book was written in conjunction with my preparation of a sequence of three public lectures on the topic of engineering and design to be delivered at Princeton University. The text incorporates the subject of those Louis Clark Vanuxem Lectures, given in Princeton on December 7, 8, and 9, 2004, but is in no way a manuscript of the talks, whose titles were:

    1.  From Plato’s Cave to PowerPoint: An Illustrated Lecture on the Illustrated Lecture

    2.  Good, Better, Better: The Evolution of Imperfect Things

    3.  The Historical Future: The Persistence of Failure

    The written format has allowed me to expand the range of things and systems covered and to include more examples and detail than did the spoken word. Unfortunately, space in a book does not allow nearly as many illustrations as were used in my PowerPoint presentations at Princeton.

    Engineers approach the lecture format in quite a different manner from that of humanists. In my experience, the latter typically read verbatim from a prepared text and use few, if any, graphics or illustrations. In contrast, engineers tend to use a good number of slides and related visual aids—in the form of drawings, diagrams, charts, graphs, equations, and demonstrations—to illustrate their talks, which are typically delivered extemporaneously. That is not to say that they are unprepared, for the engineer will more likely than not have gone over and over the visual materials and the essence of the commentary that will accompany them. The number and order of slides will be edited and reedited in the weeks leading up to the talk, for which the illustrations serve also much the same purpose as do prompting notes on index cards. Over the years, mechanical, visual, and digital devices ranging from magic lanterns to computer software like PowerPoint have greatly facilitated the process of preparing and projecting slides. Still, there remains room for improvement, as is described in the first chapter of this book.

    Writing also benefits greatly from the use of computers, of course, but no author should ever blame malfunctioning electrons for the misfire of neurons in his own brain. If I have made any errors in this book, they are my responsibility alone and not that of the individuals who have helped me in so many ways. As always, I am deeply indebted to libraries and librarians, most importantly those at Duke University, and in particular Eric Smith and Linda Martinez. I am especially grateful to them for their assistance in helping me identify and secure obscure sources from incomplete references, and for introducing me to increasingly powerful electronic databases. And I am once again greatly in debt to the largely anonymous but immensely generous institution of Interlibrary Loan.

    I am also grateful to Jack Judson, director of the Magic Lantern Castle Museum in San Antonio, Texas, who guided me through his outstanding collection of lanterns and related materials; to Tom Hope, who provided me hard historical data on the development of the slide projector; to Robin Young, who invited me and my wife to visit Stonecrop Gardens and who ensured that we had a good view of its flint bridge; and to Pete Lewis, who provided insight into and documentation for cast-iron bridges. Charles Siple, an inveterate correspondent and draftsman, was kind enough to draw the diagrams of splitting wedges and an arch from my amateur sketches. As usual, my family was also extremely helpful. Stephen Petroski helped me find documentation for my statements about design in sports, and Karen Petroski improved my knowledge of the Internet. Once again, Catherine Petroski was my first reader, and she also served as photographer and provider of digital images and graphics.

    I was asked to write this book by Sam Elworthy of Princeton University Press. I am grateful to him for his persistence in convincing me to present the series of lectures and to prepare a book on the topic of design. The Princeton University Committee on Public Lectures and its chair, Sergio Verdú, extended to me the invitation to speak in the Vanuxem lecture series, which dates from 1912. It is an honor for me to join the distinguished list of Vanuxem lecturers.

    Finally, I appreciate the planning, warm reception, and hospitality that members of the Princeton community extended to Catherine and me over the three days of the lectures. Susan Jennings and an excellent audiovisual crew made sure that the mechanical and electronic details were in order in the lecture room in McCosh Hall. David Billington, who was enormously generous with his time, turned me loose in his Maillart Archive and allowed me to sit in on some of his own lectures and to meet with his students. David and Phyllis Billington were most gracious hosts, who helped Catherine and me experience Princeton in times of leisure and in time of emergency.

    SUCCESS THROUGH FAILURE

    INTRODUCTION

    Desire, not necessity, is the mother of invention. New things and the ideas for things come from our dissatisfaction with what there is and from the want of a satisfactory thing for doing what we want done. More precisely, the development of new artifacts and new technologies follows from the failure of existing ones to perform as promised or as well as can be hoped for or imagined. Frustration and disappointment associated with the use of a tool or the performance of a system puts a challenge on the table: Improve the thing. Sometimes, as when a part breaks in two, the focal point for the improvement is obvious. Other times, such as when a complex system runs disappointingly slowly, the way to speed it up may be far from clear. In all cases, however, the beginnings of a solution lay in isolating the cause of the failure and in focusing on how to avoid, obviate, remove, or circumvent it. Inventors, engineers, designers, and common users take up such problems all the time.

    The earliest useful things were, of course, those found in nature. Not surprisingly, these same things became the earliest tools. Thus, rocks came to be used as hammers. Whether a particular rock makes a good hammer depends on its size and shape and on its hardness and toughness relative to the object being hammered. Rock types that failed to accomplish desired ends became known as poor hammers and so came to be passed over. Better hammers resulted from eliminating the failures. However, even the best of rocks have limitations as hammers, and the recognition of their failure in this regard defined the design problem: Devise a better hammer. Among the problems with a hammer-rock can be that it is awkward or uncomfortable to wield. An improvement might be sought in the shape of the rock or in providing a handle for it—or from replacing the rock with something better. In time, a growing variety of metal hammer heads and wooden hammer handles, appropriate to a variety of tasks and grips, would reflect increasing specialization and diversification. Among such diversity, one might expect that there was a single best hammer for a particular task. All the others would fail to work as well at that task. Should all existing hammers fail to work properly for a newly developed task, then a still newer hammer might have to be developed. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, some five hundred different types of hammers were being produced in Birmingham, England, alone.

    Technological systems also have their roots in the given world. The circadian and seasonal rhythms of nature drove the development of patterns of rest and migration. Even the simple act of sleeping when it is dark could be fraught with danger, however, as may have been discovered the hard way. If all the members of a group slept simultaneously, some might fail to survive the night. Recognizing this failure of the system would naturally lead to such concepts as the staggered watch and other means of protection. Thus, the group might begin sleeping in a cave whose single entrance could be guarded by a boulder rolled across it. The inconveniences of migration ultimately led to the development of systems of agriculture and defense. No matter how well developed a thing or system becomes, however, it will never be without limitations. There are no mechanical utopias. Therefore, there will always be room for improvement. The most successful improvements ultimately are those that focus on the limitations—on the failures.

    Success and failure in design are intertwined. Though a focus on failure can lead to success, too great a reliance on successful precedents can lead to failure. Success is not simply the absence of failure; it also masks potential modes of failure. Emulating success may be efficacious in the short term, but such behavior invariably and surprisingly leads to failure itself. Thus, a single type of rock that worked reasonably well as a hammer for every previously known task might be said to be the hammer-rock. Whenever anyone wanted an all-purpose hammer they would look for that type of rock, if they

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