luck

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.” — Seneca

“People are always claiming that success is a matter of luck, but as Pasteur pointed out, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” […] Many times a discussion with a person who has just done something important will produce a description of how they were led, almost step by step, to the result. It is usually based on things they had done, or intensely thought about, years ago. You succeed because you have prepared yourself with the necessary background long ago, without, of course, knowing then that it would prove to be a necessary step to success.” — Richard Hamming

“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.” — Ray Kroc

“Luck has nothing to do with it, because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours, on the court working for my one moment in time, not knowing when it would come.” — Serena William

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The 4 Types of Luck ¹

1. Blind Luck → uncontrollable
2. Active Luck (Luck from Motion) → controllable
3. Discerned Luck (Luck from Awareness) → controllable
4. Personality Luck (Luck from Uniqueness) → controllable

“Return on Luck (ROL)” by Jim Collins

• Great companies do not get disproportionately more good luck than others, but they do disproportionately benefit from the good luck they get, i.e., they generate high ROL.

Footnotes

1. James H. Austin classifies four types of chances (the word Austin uses for luck) in his book Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty. ↩