CHAPTER SEVENRiding the Swan
WE HAVE SEEN THAT with risk comes opportunity and that something objectively bad can be turned into an outcome that is, at least in some respects, beneficial. Firms that manage to do so meet the criteria for being considered antifragile, because they stand to gain from disorder. A firm that is antifragile can be said to be risk‐loving, a term that describes a preference for more volatility rather than less. This is a departure from the more normal state of risk aversion, which indicates a preference for certainty and stability.
We will now explore another logic by which firms should positively love risk and the upside that comes with it. The change in perspective is that, this time, we do not wait for a crisis to happen before we strike. Instead, with a respectful nod to the Black Swans, we launch ourselves headlong into an adventure, guns blazing. Even our usual foe, the wipeout, may be a fully accepted possibility in these cases. The goal now is to maximize upside potential, come (almost) what may. This is the strategy of Riding the Swan, of holding on to its neck and following it up towards the sky.1
This chapter will explain how such a risk‐loving attitude may come about. Before setting out to do that, I remind the reader that there is nothing in the Black Swan framework that rules out massive positive consequences. Perhaps it is telling of our mental wiring that the concept has come to be so closely associated with low probability events with ...
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