Petroski: Success Through Failure

From Scienticity

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Henry Petroski. Success Through Failure : The Paradox of Design. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2006. xii + 235 pages.

Henry Petroski has been ardent in promoting the idea that a healthy relationship with failure is vital to engineering success. He believes that hubris is the root cuase of engineering faliure. Consider his example concerning the US Space Shuttle, where he describes managers' response to a sequence of little failures as "confirming" success rather than as harbingers of castastrophe.