ABSTRACT
When things go wrong, its common to seek reasons for failure with the intention of using the knowledge gained to prevent similar failures in the future, and at times to allocate blame and responsibility. In management science considerable effort is placed on reducing future uncertainty through research, analysis, forecasting, scenario planning, and the like. We have a basic need to make sense of the world around us so that we can act in it. However, despite many investigations, multiple research projects, and an endless stream of popular (and unpopular) books that offer recipes for future mistakes, we still make mistakes; the future remains uncertain, and we are frequently surprised by what we thought were outlier events, so improbable that they could be ignored.
