Robert H. Frank, The New York Times, August 4, 2012
What is the role that luck plays, versus quality, in assuring success? Success really does rest–at least in part–on the intangibles. In their recent book Everything is Obvious* (*Once You Know the Answer), sociologists Duncan J. Watts, Matthew Sagalnik, and Peter Dodds demonstrate that the quality of a product alone is rarely a good predictor of market success; more often, it’s those “chance elements” that account for how a product performs in the marketplace. […read more]