<i>Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.</i><p>He <i>was</i> lucky though. Broadcast.com was the most bogus of all Bubble acquisitions. Cuban got the highest payoff per dollar of value created in the history of start-ups.<p>The fact that he worked hard for 20 years before that doesn't mean he didn't get lucky. Randomness strikes everyone equally.
Luck is a topic that really deserves more attention, especially in business schools. Almost any successful person will tell you that luck played a major part in their success. <p>Being right in math is not luck; it's usually the result of deduction. It's deducing two manifestations of the same thing are indeed the same.<p>Being right in business doesn't mean the same thing as it does in math. I think that's where people get "being right" confused. Being right in business can mean lots of different things, but most of the time, it means some idea can generate profit. It's more similar to chess, where you can position yourself the best you can, but are still totally dependent on other factors (in chess, your opponent; in business, many many factors). Luck definitely plays a major part in this scenario, no matter how ingenious you are. It's not an insult to say one got lucky in business, as saying "you got lucky" here is basically the same as saying "other variables did not impede your plan". The appropriate response should be "that's pretty obvious".
In poker we have a saying about tournaments, which is that they are a lottery and the best players get a few extra tickets. The business world seems much the same. Luckily just like in poker, if you keep getting a disproportionately large number of tickets, and keep drawing over and over, your chances of winning approach 1.
Mark's entire "Success and Motivation" series is awesome!!<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.blogmaverick.com+%22Success+and+Motivation%22&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enIN233" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.blogmaverick.com+%22...</a>