Just quoting that line is confusing. The thesis in those paragraphs is that COVID benefitted major lines of their business more than it hurt others and that was due to characteristics of the supply chain.

I agree anti-fragile is often misused but the author takes care to define robustness first and contrasts his antifragility thesis to the robustness of the overall sound business.

That said, I would look at other companies for examples of “true antifragility” although it’s interesting to try to analyze how a top global company can still raise the limit of its performance in situations that hurt its competitors.

The external shocks to a process benefit the process and make it stronger. Eg your immune system gets stronger by exposed to some amount of bugs that it needs to fight, despite your getting sick while it's fighting them.

The distinction is whether it's "This is fine, we did ok through this" which is robust vs "This is something where we are now in a stronger position from being knocked about a bit."

A well made double brick wall may be robust and survive the cyclone looking good but is not anti-fragile.

Yes, I understand. I think they were trying hard to make that distinction in the article with the long section about robustness and the long section about antifragility, as well as the definitions up front that match yours.

I may have hit reply on the wrong comment there. Sorry.

exactly. if anti-fragility is only achieved through robustness, what is the point of the distinction?

The point of the distinction is to signal oneself as a fan of Taleb.

Because the concept of antifragile is nonsense. People don’t get stronger by lifting kettle bells, they get stronger from the rest and nutrition they take after lifting kettle bells. If you put the human body under constant stress, it just breaks down—like anything else under constant stress.

Apple showed excellent robustness under the stress from the impact of COVID. It did so via strong capital reserves and diverse lines of business. Which is great, but it’s bog-standard corporate strategy. Very hard to execute well, though.