I recently reread Jurassic Park. The last time I read it, I wasn’t working in risk or finance, and I remembered it as a very different book (or, more accurately, I mainly remembered the movie rather than the book).
(Spoilers for a 36-year-old book…)
The book is, fundamentally, about how risk management systems fail. Crichton, or at least his most philosophical character, Ian Malcolm, seems to argue that the complete collapse of Jurassic Park was inevitable. Unlike Malcolm, I’m not sure catastrophic failure was inevitable from the beginning. Part of the book’s horror is watching a series of cascading failures that ultimately reach a point where the consequences become irreversible.
I had forgotten that the plot is initially driven by nervous venture capital investors. John Hammond, portrayed in the movie as an enthusiastic grandfather delighted by his creations, is far more interested in exploiting the new technology’s money-making potential in the novel. He invites a group of scientists, along with his own grandchildren, to tour the island before opening day because he hopes to reassure his investors that the risks are under control.
Of course, things do not go as planned.
Cost-cutting shortcuts, disgruntled contractors, untested backup plans, communication failures, and even slow computer reboots continually move the plot along. Each time it seems that the immediate problem has been solved, another one emerges, testing the characters’ abilities. None of these failures, in isolation, would necessarily have doomed the park. Together, however, they create exactly the kind of cascading failures that effective governance is designed to prevent.
While the premise is unapologetically science fiction (and fun science fiction at that!), the organizational failures feel remarkably familiar. The design flaws, incentive problems, misplaced confidence, and accumulating operational weaknesses are the kinds of patterns I’ve encountered throughout my career.
Like many science fiction novels about technological progress, one of Jurassic Park’s central themes is hubris. It’s the obvious motivation embodied by Hammond, but also, in different ways, by all of the park’s technical staff. Hubris remains a timeless recipe for catastrophe. This time, though, I found myself drawn to something else.
The novel is, in many ways, a love letter to Chaos Theory.
Each section follows events as they orbit back toward a familiar pattern: overconfidence, an unexamined assumption, the realization that something has broken, desperate ingenuity, another failure as something else breaks down, and a final Hail Mary as the characters attempt to regain control. Like a recurring orbit in a dynamic system, the specific events vary, but the underlying pattern does not.
Even as some of the characters—Malcolm first, then Ellie Sattler, and eventually Grant and Muldoon—begin to recognize the pattern, the path dependencies are already in place. Their choices become increasingly constrained by earlier decisions.
Progress often happens because a character literally takes a different path. Grant abandons the road for the river. Sattler jumps from the roof. Tim’s clever trap leads a raptor into the freezer. None of these choices eliminates the underlying system, but each changes its trajectory just enough to create a new possibility.
Ultimately, those interventions aren’t enough to prevent systemic collapse. Hammond’s greed and overconfidence establish the initial conditions, and the interaction of dozens of technical, organizational, and human failures leads to catastrophe. The dinosaurs escape the island.
But not all hope is lost. Just as a series of selfish or careless decisions leads to the park’s collapse, a series of thoughtful, brave, and adaptive decisions buys the survivors more time and new opportunities. Ultimately, those who make it off the island do so because they stop responding to Hammond’s sale’s pitch and begin responding to the reality of the risks in front of them.
The ending suggests that the story isn’t really over. The dinosaurs spreading across the mainland and the humans who escaped the island become two dynamic systems that will continue to interact, each influencing the trajectory of the other. The park may be gone, but the orbit continues.
ENDNOTES
Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, narrated by Scott Brick (New York: Penguin Random House Audio, 2017), audiobook.
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I have never felt more seen as a massive fan of this book. I used to reread it approximately every 18 months.