Tim Harford

Why organisations work with Tim Harford

• Translates economic and statistical research into commercial decisions, drawing on a Financial Times column that has run for nearly two decades and a body of ten published books.
• Brings credibility on numbers that very few speakers can match: Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and OBE for services to economic understanding.
• Reframes innovation as an evidence-based discipline grounded in adaptation and failure, the central thesis of “Adapt” and “Messy”, rather than the usual creativity rhetoric.
• Equips senior audiences to interrogate their own data culture using the rules from “How To Make The World Add Up”, a practical antidote to misleading statistics inside organisations.
• Trusted as a host, moderator and after-dinner speaker by serious audiences because his radio craft on “More or Less” and “Cautionary Tales” carries directly into the room.

Biography highlights

• Senior columnist, Financial Times, writing “The Undercover Economist”.
• Presenter, BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, the long-running statistics-in-the-news programme.
• Host of “Cautionary Tales”, a Pushkin Industries podcast, and creator of “Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy”.
• Author of ten books, including “The Undercover Economist”, “Adapt”, “Messy”, “How To Make The World Add Up” and “The Truth Detective”.
• Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and of Brasenose College, Oxford; Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford.
• OBE for services to Improving Economic Understanding; winner of the Bastiat Prize (twice), the Wincott Journalist of the Year award, and the Royal Statistical Society award for journalistic excellence.

Biography

Most organisations claim to be evidence-led. Few are. Decisions are framed in numbers but driven by narrative, and innovation programmes routinely refuse to learn from the failures that contain the most useful information. Harford’s work, across the Financial Times column, ten books and two long-running BBC and Pushkin productions, has been built around exactly that gap.

His books map the intellectual territory leaders care about. “The Undercover Economist” reframed everyday markets through the lens of price, scarcity and incentive, and has sold more than 1.5 million copies in thirty languages. “Adapt” and “Messy” argue that progress depends on disciplined trial, error and tolerance for disorder, a more honest account of innovation than most corporate playbooks allow. “How To Make The World Add Up” gives senior audiences a practical method for testing the numbers they are asked to act on.

The credentials behind that work are unusual. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Associate Member of Nuffield College Oxford, an OBE for services to economic understanding, and a body of awards from the Bastiat Prize to the Wincott. As presenter of BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, Harford has spent years publicly stress-testing the statistics that shape policy and business commentary, which makes him one of the few speakers who can hold a senior room on data culture without resorting to platitudes.

For boards and leadership teams, the value is concrete. Sharper questions about innovation portfolios, a working method for separating signal from noise, and a more honest model of how organisations actually learn. The recent “Cautionary Tales” series, which dissects high-profile organisational failures, has become a reference point for leaders thinking seriously about how decisions go wrong.

Key speaking topics

• Behavioural economics in commercial decision-making
• Innovation, adaptation and learning from failure
• Statistical literacy and data culture in organisations
• Economic forces shaping business and policy
• Creativity, disorder and team productivity
• Cognitive bias and judgement under uncertainty

Ideal for

• Boards and executive committees confronting decisions where the numbers are contested
• Strategy, innovation and R&D leaders building portfolios under uncertainty
• CFOs and finance functions reviewing how evidence is presented and challenged internally
• Senior leadership offsites where the brief calls for serious intellectual content with broad relevance

Audience outcomes

• A working method for interrogating statistics and management dashboards before acting on them
• A clearer model of innovation as managed trial and error, with practical implications for portfolio choice
• Sharper recognition of the cognitive errors that recur in senior decision-making
• Concrete references from “Cautionary Tales” and “More or Less” that audiences can use to reframe their own debates