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The Concept of Antifragility and its Implications for the Practice of Risk Analysis

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  • Terje Aven

Abstract

Nassim Taleb's antifragile concept has been shown considerable interest in the media and on the Internet recently. For Taleb, the antifragile concept is a blueprint for living in a black swan world (where surprising extreme events may occur), the key being to love variation and uncertainty to some degree, and thus also errors. The antonym of “fragile” is not robustness or resilience, but “please mishandle” or “please handle carelessly,” using an example from Taleb when referring to sending a package full of glasses by post. In this article, we perform a detailed analysis of this concept, having a special focus on how the antifragile concept relates to common ideas and principles of risk management. The article argues that Taleb's antifragile concept adds an important contribution to the current practice of risk analysis by its focus on the dynamic aspects of risk and performance, and the necessity of some variation, uncertainties, and risk to achieve improvements and high performance at later stages.

Suggested Citation

  • Terje Aven, 2015. "The Concept of Antifragility and its Implications for the Practice of Risk Analysis," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(3), pages 476-483, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:35:y:2015:i:3:p:476-483
    DOI: 10.1111/risa.12279
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. W. Edwards Deming, 2000. "The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262541165, April.
    2. Terje Aven, 2011. "On Some Recent Definitions and Analysis Frameworks for Risk, Vulnerability, and Resilience," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(4), pages 515-522, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Jordaan, D. & Kirsten, J., 2018. "Measuring the Fragility of Agribusiness Chains: A Case Study of the South African Lamb Chain," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277501, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Aven, Terje, 2019. "The cautionary principle in risk management: Foundation and practical use," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    3. Yanwei Li & Araz Taeihagh & Martin de Jong & Andreas Klinke, 2021. "Toward a Commonly Shared Public Policy Perspective for Analyzing Risk Coping Strategies," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 519-532, March.
    4. Garcia-Perez, Alexeis & Cegarra-Navarro, Juan Gabriel & Sallos, Mark Paul & Martinez-Caro, Eva & Chinnaswamy, Anitha, 2023. "Resilience in healthcare systems: Cyber security and digital transformation," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    5. Terje Aven, 2018. "Reflections on the Use of Conceptual Research in Risk Analysis," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(11), pages 2415-2423, November.
    6. Omar K. Pineda & Hyobin Kim & Carlos Gershenson, 2019. "A Novel Antifragility Measure Based on Satisfaction and Its Application to Random and Biological Boolean Networks," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2019, pages 1-10, May.
    7. Mahdi Moudi & Zhongwen Xu & Liming Yao & He Yuan, 2020. "Dynamic Optimization Model for Improving Urban Water Supply System Fragility with Uncertain Streamflow," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 34(4), pages 1465-1477, March.
    8. Rachunok, Benjamin & Nateghi, Roshanak, 2020. "The sensitivity of electric power infrastructure resilience to the spatial distribution of disaster impacts," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    9. Terje Aven, 2019. "The Call for a Shift from Risk to Resilience: What Does it Mean?," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(6), pages 1196-1203, June.

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