I'm reminded of Emerson's "Self Reliance." Successful people are always already successful, even if you have never heard of them. Could be this is why they act before other people might think they are ready. Here's a passage that came to my mind (though the whole thing is genius):<p>"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself[.]"<p>Maybe "greatness" and success are apples and oranges. (It depends if the latter has a purely mercantile meaning, which is boring and temporary, in my own view.) But I'd agree that the truly great innovators -- whether in poetry, programming, painting, music, business -- they don't worry about failure. They may not like it but it doesn't stop them. Greatness may be aided by fortune but it doesn't ask for permission. It may be forgotten or overlooked in its own time. But like Emerson and this author, it's hard to dispute the central tenet: "success" requires action combined with talent, and a deeply held conviction that now is always the right time to act.