The secrets to successfully planning and delivering projects on any scale—from home renovation
to space exploration—by the world’s leading expert on megaprojects This book is important
timely instructive and entertaining. What more could you ask for?”—Daniel Kahneman Nobel
Prize–winning author of Thinking Fast and Slow Over-budget and over-schedule is an
inevitability. Incompetence and grift is outrageous. Bent Flyvbjerg with this terrific
data-driven book has shown that there is another way.”—Frank Gehry Nothing is more inspiring
than a big vision that becomes a triumphant new reality. Think of how the Empire State
Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York’s skyline in twenty-one months or how
Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.
These are wonderful stories. But most of the time big visions turn into nightmares. Remember
Boston’s Big Dig”? Almost every sizeable city in the world has such a fiasco in its backyard.
In fact no less than 92% of megaprojects come in over budget or over schedule or both. The
cost of California’s high-speed rail project soared from $33 billion to $100 billon—and won’t
even go where promised. More modest endeavors whether launching a small business organizing a
conference or just finishing a work project on time also commonly fail. Why? Understanding
what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor
Bent Flyvbjerg dubbed the world’s leading megaproject expert.” In How Big Things Get Done he
identifies the errors in judgment and decision-making that lead projects both big and small
to fail and the research-based principles that will make you succeed with yours. For example:
• Understand your odds. If you don’t know them you won’t win. • Plan slow act fast. Getting
to the action quick feels right. But it’s wrong. • Think right to left. Start with your goal
then identify the steps to get there. • Find your Lego. Big is best built from small. • Be a
team maker. You won’t succeed without an us.” • Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they
can’t so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can. • Know that your biggest risk is you. Full of
vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House to the making of the latest
Pixar blockbusters to a home renovation in Brooklyn gone awry How Big Things Get Done reveals
how to get any ambitious project done—on time and on budget.
