How big of a role does luck play in success?
Here is an interesting quote from Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) at the Web 2.0 conference:
"The #1 factor that contributed to our success is luck. We followed our hearts, and worked on search because it was useful and an interesting problem."
I've heard this a lot from successful entrepreneurs and I hate it. It means that hard work and doing smart things don't necessarily guarantee success. Being the logical person I am, it sucks to think there is this amorphous thing out there called "luck" that may ultimately dictate whether a business is successful or not. While I believe to a certain degree that you can "make your own luck," I've definitely seen a lot of people become very successful because they were at the right place at the right time with the right idea and if you changed any of those variables it wouldn't have happened.
3 Comments:
I'm with you. That and "right place at the right time" or "it's all in the timing." Mostly because I have no sense of timing and am therefore quite bitter ;)
There's a fantastic paper for the final week of Software Engineering Concepts about how the "command and control" style of management has been proven bad for software-intensive system, and a more adaptive, open, flexible, community-oriented, luck-acknowledging style is better.
Of course, there are those who say luck comes to those best prepared to take advantage of it ;)
Stumbled upon ur blog from Scott Berkun. i completely agree with this one.. u need to be at the right place at the right moment and also have the sense to seize the oppurtunity :)
Very interestings things u have been blogging abt.. keep up the good work..
Good Luck for your Future Directions that you take :)
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