‘The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.’ –Oscar Wilde
What if talent and luck are increasingly hard to distinguish?
Alan Krueger, the departing chairman of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, hit upon just that possibility in a speech in June, when he observed, “The lucky and the talented – and it is often hard to tell the difference – have been doing better and better, while the vast majority has struggled to keep up.” […]
Imperfect substitution means that you “would rather listen to one song by your favorite singer than a song and a half by someone else. Or, in another context, it means that if you need to have heart surgery, you would rather have the best surgeon in Cleveland perform it rather than the second and third best together.” In the corporate context, a board of directors would sooner pay $100 million for the best possible CEO than $10 million for the second best. […] But how does one get to be the best CEO, rather than second best? Here’s where luck comes in.
