The concept of antifragility was proposed by mathematician, statistician, writer, essayist and investor Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012), his proposal comes precisely to define what is the opposite of fragile, which for lack of a more elegant word, is called anti-fragile. The idea is that while some organisms perish in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, being fragile, others are able to thrive amidst such volatility being, therefore, the opposite.
When defining the Antifragile concept, Taleb also demonstrates the triad that allows its existence: Fragile, Robust, and Antifragile, almost like a trajectory of evolution, where in order to become antifragile it is initially necessary to be fragile.
Fragile are things that lose their structure as there are sudden changes in their environment, when they are under the influence of chaos and high stress. Robust are things that are able to take a high amount of stress, and maintain their shape; it's the same idea as resilience: the ability to return to their original shape.
Although it may sound interesting, by returning to their original form these things stop growing, and stop profiting from the chaos. Anti-fragile things, on the other hand, will be those that will benefit from, and grow in, chaos.
The author is an expert in business and finance, so his work has a financial market connotation, but it is not difficult to see the parallels with everyday life, since the author himself makes a point of illustrating the book with these parallels.
The same author, in another work, discusses the concept of "Black Swan" which is "the impossibility to calculate the risks of rare events and with important consequences and predict their occurrence" (Taleb, 2021, pg 11). An idea that closely resembles the "Forces of 10x" indicated by Andrew Groove in "Only the Paranoid Survive", in fact one might think that a Black Swan causes such a force.
Antifragility then emerges as an antidote to the Black Swan, being an attribute capable of dealing with it and growing in its presence. It is, therefore, a characteristic found in everything that is natural and organic, since under natural selection, those who are antifragile will tend to survive while the fragile ones will suffer.
The idea of robustness, on the other hand, is contested by Taleb by nature itself, since what is robust for the moment, probably will not be so in the future. By definition robust is the property of resisting something, but due to the very randomness of nature, something tomorrow may be much greater than something now, making today's robust the fragile of tomorrow.
Of course, the concepts here are being explained in a simplistic way, Taleb's work is much more interesting than this... The concept of Fragility, just like the concept of Antifragility, is the result of asymmetries, negative in the first and positive in the second.
We understand such asymmetries in the sense of trade-offs, the same ones that are studied in innovation. In Inovatrix (2007) the authors suggest that every innovation arises from a trade-off, and Taleb's work reinforces this idea, adding one more factor:
In Taleb's view innovation occurs when we are pressured by an asymmetry, that is, when there is a need that pressures to action. This trigger of reaction to setbacks is what gives rise to innovation. Note that in the case of natural selection this need is survival itself, but in the case of business... as well.
It is about understanding the dichotomy of behavior of those things that, when faced with risk, in a scenario of uncertainty and volatility, understand that they have much to lose, and for this reason prefer not to act - thus being powerless before what is uncertain, constituting themselves as Fragile. On the other hand, those who have the opposite asymmetry to this, the second part of this dichotomy, who, when faced with risk, realize that there is much to be gained in the midst of uncertainty, and consequently little to be lost, and therefore prefer to act, are Antifragile.
Antifragility meets the need of organizations to respond to the VUCA world, to be able to innovate in order to survive, and at the same time to be able to navigate in the midst of uncertainty, taking advantage of it and growing with it.
A thoughtful, mechanical and predictable system will not be able to be antifragile, because something cannot be prepared in advance for the future uncertainties that it will experience.
Thus arises the idea that biological systems are more adaptive than non-biological systems. We can understand this same logic from the idea of complex and non-complex systems.
Most man-made systems can be complicated, with various technologies and knowledge applied to them, but their logic is unambiguous, and their interdependencies are clear, allowing the system to function correctly. However, in complex systems we are unable to see the interdependencies, and yet they are able to function in harmony. Thus we realize that Antifragility is a characteristic of complex systems.
Mechanical systems need repair, do not function well with randomness, have little or no interdependencies, wear out with use, and external stresses compromise the material.
Organic systems, on the other hand, are complex, have the ability to self-repair, grow with randomness, have a high degree of interdependence, and spoil if not used.
When we talk about the current dilemma of organizations, we talk about the VUCA world, and the author Bill George indicates that a VUCA world can only be led by people with vision, understanding, courage, and adaptability, that is, a VUCA leadership. When we confront Bill's ideas with Antifragility
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