Make Your Own Luck: 12 Practical Steps to Taking Smarter Risks in Business

Humans are gambling animals—and not just when we invest in the stock market. Every time we take an action—deciding which job applicant to hire, which product to launch— we are betting our time, reputation, effort, and money in the hope of achieving some future result.
 
Some people base their business bets on dumb luck, but the great ones—like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Oprah Winfrey—make their own luck.
 
Eileen C. Shapiro and Howard H. Stevenson have compressed the complex skills of making your own luck—which they call predictive intelligence—into twelve easy and practical steps. These steps will get you the results you want with the least risk and the most upside. They will help you take smarter risks without the “analysis paralysis” that gets so many people and companies in trouble.
 
Most books about strategy are dull and loaded with jargon. Make Your Own Luck is full of jokes, brain teasers, anecdotes, and unexpected case studies from the Battle of Antietam to the diaper war between Huggies and Pampers. It teaches readers how to build their ability to bet smart and how to use this ability to win in business and in other areas of life.

Eileen C. Shapiro enjoyed a long career at McKinsey & Co. and is now president of The Hillcrest Group Inc., a strategic consulting firm. She is the author of Fad Surfing in the Boardroom.

Howard H. Stevenson is the Sarofim-Rock Professor at Harvard Business School and senior associate provost for Harvard University.