In complex systems, failures are inevitable; preventing failures is impossible. There are, however, multiple ways of responding to failures. For example, ANTIFRAGILITY is a qualification of complex adaptive systems that increase in capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of stress or failure.

It is contrasted with:

• fragility (failing)
• resilience (recovering from failure)
• and robustness (resisting failure)

A fragile system is damaged—possibly catastrophically

A robust system is largely unaffected, retaining much or all of its prior strength

Some systems actually gain strength, a property which has recently been termed antifragility.

Traditional perspectives of Digital Organization implicitly assume fragility, limiting their validity and resulting in surprise, and assume a specific end state rather than an overall condition of the system as a goal. 

We can combine the response to damage with the ability to anticipate (to act to avoid damage or exploit opportunities) creating a more complete characterization of system properties as shown in figure.

Characterization of the changes in system health when subject to external stresses.

System properties can include:

1. the ability to anticipate, resulting in avoidance of harm or exploitation of opportunities (anticipatory, purple),
2. the ability to recover from damage to a higher level of health than before (antifragile, blue),
3. the ability to recover from damage (resilient, green),
4. the ability to withstand damage (robust, orange), and
5. breaking under stress (fragile, red).