Antifragile
Coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2012 book 'Antifragile'
A property of systems that gain strength, improve, or thrive when exposed to volatility, randomness, stressors, and disorder. Beyond merely resilient (surviving shocks), antifragile systems actually benefit from them.
Used in the Books
This term appears in 4 chapters:
"...menon where low-level stress makes organisms stronger than if they'd never been stressed at all. It's counterintuitive. It's universal. And it's how antifragile organizations operate. The Discovery The discovery happened by accident. In 1888, a German pharmacologist named Hugo Schulz was testing poison..."
"...her your nutrients reach the trees. Understand the ecosystem, and you can position yourself as keystone infrastructure, design for succession, build antifragile networks, and create dependencies that make you irreplaceable. Morris Chang bet his reputation on a foundry model that six major companies rejected...."
"... keystone species lacking functional redundancy; ecosystem effects of wolf removal and restoration. Additional Reading Taleb, N.N. (2012). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Random House. - Philosophical treatment of systems that benefit from stressors; extends beyond robustness to "antif..."
"...paring your organization for rhythms you can't predict. [^3]: The concept of systems that gain from disorder is explored in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012). The biological strategies in this chapter predate Taleb's framework by millions of years but share the same ..."
Biological Context
Bones grow stronger under stress. Immune systems develop through exposure to pathogens. Muscles grow through controlled damage and repair. Evolution itself is antifragile—random mutations and selection pressure drive improvement. Antifragility is common in biological systems but rare in engineered ones.
Business Application
Antifragile organizations benefit from market volatility: they have optionality (many small bets), avoid fragile debt structures, and position to capture upside from disruption while limiting downside.