Googling Good Fortune.
Both sides made bad decisions: the young entrepreneurs wanted to sell too much too soon; the potential buyer didn’t see the potential. For Brin and Page, it was one of their luckiest setbacks. For Excite, it was a missed opportunity. But that’s only with hindsight. Neither could have forecast the future.
Can you improve your luck?
The corollary however is that the other 60% of players also succeed even though the odds are against them.
Boosting exposure to good fortune.
Research by Richard Wiseman (author, The Luck Factor) suggests luck can be learned and he lists behaviors that enhance good fortune. They include actively seeking out chance encounters with random people, listening to your intuition and having a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
Nor did Decca shut down The Beatles when they withdrew a record contract in 1961, describing them as a “guitar band on their way out”. Shortly after, the guitar band was on its way “in”. Although they would sign with only a minor EMI label, later they would start their own.
The fortune of fantasy.
For a recent example, look no further than the persistent J K Rowling. Twelve editors rejected Harry Potter before it was published by a minor house – at the urging of the CEO’s 8-year-old daughter. Rowling believed in her work. Creating a self-fulfilling prophesy via positive expectations can be powerful.
The upside can often be surprising. I suffered some serious losses in the financial crisis, but those tax losses have been extremely handy on the climb out. They allowed me to pursue successful alternative strategies I might not otherwise have considered.
Wiseman’s work suggests that staying open and staying out there get’s you lucky, as in those dinner party stories of “how I randomly met your mother”, although some may not regard that as good fortune.
If pure luck does exist, it may no bad thing. It means that the exceptionally gifted do not have the field to themselves and the rest of us are still in with a chance.