Luck: A Key Idea for Business and Society

Shortlisted for the EGOS Book Award in 2021, this book moves beyond tired analyses of business success that bias leadership and strategy in order to focus on the critical role of good fortune.

The author provides insights from economics, sociology, political science, philosophy, and psychology to create a brief intellectual history of luck. In positioning luck as a key idea in management, the book analyzes various facets of fortune such as randomness, serendipity, and opportunity. Often overlooked given psychological bias toward meritocratic explanations, this book quantifies luck to establish the idea in a more central role in understanding variations in business performance.

In bringing the concept of luck in from the periphery, this concise book is a readable overview of management which will help students, scholars, and reflective practitioners see the subject in a new light.

Chengwei Liu (Ph.D., Cambridge) is Associate Professor of Strategy and Behavioral Science at the ESMT Berlin, Germany and the University of Warwick, UK.