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The study explored the secrets of success described by Chinese apparel new ventures. Barney's (1991) resource-based view of the firm helped the researchers understand secrets to success from the firm's internal perspective, and the social network theory informed key secrets from the external perspective (Ahuja, 2000). In-depth interviews with open-ended questions were employed with sixteen top apparel companies in China. Results revealed that having the first successful store is the symbol of success and that success is a never-ending goal. The key secrets to success were described as the founders' ability to find the niche market, their down-to-earth attitude, unique branding position and products, and, finally, external relationships. The study will help Chinese apparel new ventures in realizing the secrets of surviving the initial stage. Academic organizations and governments may want to utilize the study findings to develop more curricula and policies that may be more fruitful for small businesses' success in the long term.

The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is mainly due, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, smartness, efforts, willfulness, hard work or risk taking. Sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in achieving significant success. But, as a matter of fact, it is rather common to underestimate the importance of external forces in individual successful stories. It is very well known that intelligence (or, more in general, talent and personal qualities) exhibits a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth — often considered as a proxy of success — follows typically a power law (Pareto law), with a large majority of poor people and a very small number of billionaires. Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale-invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes. In this paper, we suggest that such an ingredient is just randomness. In particular, our simple agent-based model shows that, if it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by averagely talented but sensibly luckier individuals. As far as we know, this counterintuitive result — although implicitly suggested between the lines in a vast literature — is quantified here for the first time. It sheds new light on the effectiveness of assessing merit on the basis of the reached level of success and underlines the risks of distributing excessive honors or resources to people who, at the end of the day, could have been simply luckier than others. We also compare several policy hypotheses to show the most efficient strategies for public funding of research, aiming to improve meritocracy, diversity of ideas and innovation.

Humanity has been fascinated by the pursuit of fortune since time immemorial, and many successful outcomes benefit from strokes of luck. But success is subject to complexity, uncertainty, and change — and at times becoming increasingly unequally distributed. This leads to tension and confusion over to what extent people actually get what they deserve (i.e. fairness/meritocracy). Moreover, in many fields, humans are overconfident and pervasively confuse luck for skill (I win, it is skill; I lose, it is bad luck). In some fields, there is too much risk-taking; in others, not enough. Where success derives in large part from luck — and especially where bailouts skew the incentives (heads, I win; tails, you lose) — it follows that luck is rewarded too much. This incentivizes a culture of gambling, while downplaying the importance of productive effort. And, short-term success is often rewarded, irrespective, and potentially at the detriment, of the long-term system fitness. However, much success is truly meritocratic, and the problem is to discern and reward based on merit. We call this the fair reward problem. To address this, we propose three different measures to assess merit: (i) raw outcome; (ii) risk-adjusted outcome, and (iii) prospective. We emphasize the need, in many cases, for the deductive prospective approach, which considers the potential of a system to adapt and mutate in novel futures. This is formalized within an evolutionary system, comprised of five processes, inter alia handling the exploration–exploitation trade-off. Several human endeavors — including finance, politics, and science — are analyzed through these lenses, and concrete solutions are proposed to support a prosperous and meritocratic society.

While wealth distribution in the world is highly skewed and heavy-tailed, human talent — as the majority of individual features — is normally distributed. In a recent computational study by Pluchino et al. [Talent vs luck: The role of randomness in success and failure, Adv. Complex Syst. 21(03–04) (2018) 1850014], it has been shown that the combined effects of both random external factors (lucky and unlucky events) and multiplicative dynamics in capital accumulation are able to clarify this apparent contradiction. We introduce here a simplified version (STvL) of the original Talent versus Luck (TvL) model, where only lucky events are present, and verify that its dynamical rules lead to the same very large wealth inequality. We also derive some analytical approximations aimed to capture the mechanism responsible for the creation of such wealth inequality from a Gaussian-distributed talent. Under these approximations, our analysis is able to reproduce quite well the results of the numerical simulations of the simplified model in special cases. On the other hand, it also shows that the complexity of the model lies in the fact that lucky events are transformed into an increase of capital with heterogeneous rates, which yields a nontrivial generalization of the role of multiplicative processes in generating wealth inequality, whose fully generic case is still not amenable to analytical computations.

This paper further investigates the Talent versus Luck (TvL) model described by [Pluchino et al. Talent versus luck: The role of randomness in success and failure, Adv. Complex Syst.21 (2018) 1850014] which models the relationship between ‘talent’ and ‘luck’ on the impact of an individuals career. It is shown that the model is very sensitive to both random sampling and the choice of value for the input parameters. Running the model repeatedly with the same set of input parameters gives a range of output values of over 50% of the mean value. The sensitivity of the inputs of the model is analyzed using a variance-based approach based upon generating Sobol sequences of quasi-random numbers. When using the model to look at the talent associated with an individual who has the maximum capital over a model run it has been shown that the choice for the standard deviation of the talent distribution contributes to 67% of the model variability. When investigating the maximum amount of capital returned by the model the probability of a lucky event at any given epoch has the largest impact on the model, almost three times more than any other individual parameter. Consequently, during the analysis of the model results one must keep in mind the impact that only small changes in the input parameters can have on the model output.

Any collection can be ranked. Sports and games are common examples of ranked systems: players and teams are constantly ranked using different methods. The statistical properties of rankings have been studied for almost a century in a variety of fields. More recently, data availability has allowed us to study rank dynamics: how elements of a ranking change in time. Here, we study the rank distributions and rank dynamics of 12 datasets from different sports and games. To study rank dynamics, we consider measures that we have defined previously: rank diversity, change probability, rank entropy, and rank complexity. We also introduce a new measure that we call “system closure” that reflects how many elements enter or leave the rankings in time. We use a random walk model to reproduce the observed rank dynamics, showing that a simple mechanism can generate similar statistical properties as the ones observed in the datasets. Our results show that while rank distributions vary considerably for different rankings, rank dynamics have similar behaviors, independently of the nature and competitiveness of the sport or game and its ranking method. Our results also suggest that our measures of rank dynamics are general and applicable for complex systems of different natures.

The role of luck on individual success is hard to be investigated empirically. Simplified mathematical models are often used to shed light on the subtle relations between success and luck. Recently, a simple model called “Talent versus Luck” showed that the most successful individual in a population can be just an average talented individual that is subjected to a very fortunate sequence of events. Here, we modify the framework of the TvL model such that in our model the individuals’ success is modelled as an ensemble of one-dimensional random walks. Our model reproduces the original TvL results and, due to the mathematical simplicity, it shows clearly that the original conclusions of the TvL model are the consequence of two factors: first, the normal distribution of talents with low standard deviation, which creates a large number of average talented individuals; second, the low number of steps considered, which allows the observation of large fluctuations. We also show that the results strongly depend on the relative frequency of good and bad luck events, which defines a critical value for the talent: in the long run, the individuals with high talent end up very successful and those with low talent end up ruined. Last, we considered two variations to illustrate applications of the ensemble of random walks model.

An increasing number of start-ups, which create disruptive products, services, or platforms, is appearing within the logistics industry. Many of these start-ups are based on new technological innovations made possible by digitization. Compared with many of the start-ups founded during the “dotcom bubble”, current logistics start-ups seem to be more successful in creating lasting customer value. This paper aims to determine if the use of agile approaches, which have increased in importance in recent years, increases entrepreneurial success by means of the ability to better deal with the rapidly changing customer expectations, business model insecurities, and complex technological decisions. Due to the limited extent of empirical studies and the availability of only a few publications, an explorative multiple case study analysis has been executed to understand usage of agile approaches by German logistics start-ups and their interrelation with corporate performance. The main empirical foundation of the cases analyzed is a double-digit number of expert interviews conducted with company founders and executive managers. The findings of the multiple case study analysis demonstrate how logistics start-ups apply agile practices to deal with a high level of market insecurity and reveal how their application enhances company success. Future research should deepen these findings by analyzing more logistics start-ups and employees with different, non-management roles. It would especially be interesting to study direct competitors of those logistics start-ups interviewed to enable an analysis of discriminance and to deduce the best practices in use. The originality of the multiple case study presented lies in its contribution to the widely unexplored field of agility in logistics start-ups and the noteworthy opinions of the high-ranking interviewees.

Economic growth in the Asia Pacific region has surpassed all expectations. The ‘four Asian dragons’ were the powerhouse at the epicentre of this phenomenal growth. Singapore continues to adopt measures to sustain and build upon this economic growth, and strives to achieve a more competitive international manufacturing and services hub environment with total business capabilities. Singapore’s Economic Development Board has spearheaded this growth with several initiatives. These strategic thrusts are reported in this paper.

Our research examines the relationships among four factors thought to be important to new product developing organizations. Those factors include the speed with which product developers produce new products and bring them to market; the degree of integration among the various groups participating in the New Product Development (NPD) process; the proficiency with which the product developers perform their tasks; and the degree of success attained upon the completion of the NPD process. Market dynamism, or the degree of customer changeability, and market hostility, or the degree of market competitiveness, are thought to moderate the relationships among the four previously noted factors.

The research questions driving our investigation include: (1) Does NPD project success vary with NPD process speed?; (2) Does NPD speed vary across innovation types (new-to-the-world products, line extensions, etc.)?; (3) Does the strength of the relationships among NPD speed, organizational integration, NPD proficiency (overall and Fuzzy Front End [FFE]), and success vary with the degree of environmental dynamism (changing customer needs)?; and (4) Does the strength of the relationships among NPD speed, organizational integration, NPD proficiency (overall and FFE), and success vary with the degree of market hostility (competition)? We probed the electrical equipment, medical device, and heavy construction equipment industries to provide the data to address our research questions.

Our research suggests that the speed with which projects were completed in our sample did not vary between projects that were more or less successful. We also found that the speed with which projects were completed did not vary across various product categories (new-to-the-world, line extensions, etc.) of newly developed products for the industries studied. Primarily, we found that market dynamism moderates the relationship between NPD speed and NPD proficiency whereas environmental hostility mediates NPD speed and NPD proficiency, NPD speed and organizational integration, and NPD speed and new product market success.

Our data indicate that speed is not associated with NPD proficiency, degree of organizational integration, and new product success in less dynamic markets whereas speed has an inverse relationship with successfully entering new markets, the proficiency with which development and launch activities are performed, and the proficiency with which new product marketing strategies were implemented in more dynamic markets. Finally, we found that speed is inversely related to successfully entering new markets, overall NPD proficiency and organizational integration, predevelopment stage proficiency and organizational integration, and development and launch proficiency and organizational integration in non-hostile (competitive) environments whereas we found no significant relationships between these factors and speed in hostile environments. We provide several implications for both scholars and NPD managers.

Established companies are increasingly challenged to expand their innovation development capabilities and to align them to increasingly ambidextrous requirements. A currently popular way for companies to meet these requirements is corporate incubators. Successfully designing such units imposes specific challenges on companies, which results in large numbers of different corporate incubator types spanning a wide range of activities. This group of very different incubation concepts is not only very difficult to manage from a practical perspective, it is also complex to reliably explore from a research perspective. In this study, we therefore examine how incubators can be comprehensively categorised and how different objectives and strategies relate to corporate incubator performance. Results from cluster and regression analysis of a sample of incubators from 14 different industries reveal 16 clusters dependent on five objective and five strategy criteria. The criteria have a diverse relation to performance which can be explained using transactional distance theory.

Many companies have created corporate incubators to deal with the increasing pace of innovation and to foster innovation activities beyond their current business. Since these corporate incubators demand considerable resources, the parent companies continuously evaluate the incubators’ performance and then decide on their survival. This decision depends on the balance between incubator’s contributions and the hosting company’s financial investment (top-level), while the incubator’s contributions again depend on the balance between incubator investment and the supported new business contributions (bottom-level). We apply the Barnard–Simon theory of organisational equilibrium to investigate the resource flow balance on both levels and to predict the resulting incubators’ performance, which determines their future survival. The analysis is based on a sample of corporate incubators surveyed in 2019. Results show that incubators with a top-level equilibrium and a bottom-level disequilibrium perform better. These counterintuitive yet insightful results are discussed in detail.

The rising use of crowdfunding makes it important for project initiators to know how they can increase the likelihood of success of their crowdfunding campaign. The effects of using social media, although relatively easy to do via most crowdfunding platforms, have not yet been analysed in greater detail in scientific research. We address this research gap by investigating the effects of social media reach and utilisation on measures of reward-based crowdfunding success, based on an analysis of 230 projects from the crowdfunding platform wemakeit. Our results show that social media reach via the number of social media accounts that belong to the project and the number of accounts that belong to the project initiator increases the number of investors and the percentage of the funding goal that is obtained. Furthermore, social media reach via the size of the projects’ and the individuals’ social networks has not been found to be important for crowdfunding success. Social media utilisation in regard to the amount of content shared is found to be positively associated with crowdfunding success.

This quantitative study explores the outcomes of open innovation events for solvers and how such events can be successful for such participants. Specifically, the relationships among event design, solver motivation and outcomes are studied. How such an event impacts the capability of the solver to interact with the innovation ecosystem is also presented. We discovered that design elements impact the OI event outcomes, intrinsic motivation of solvers has a moderating effect on the relationship between OI design and outcomes, and open innovation events positively affect the solvers’ capacity to interact with the innovation ecosystem. Our results have implications for promoters to better design open innovation events and for solvers to ensure that they benefit from their participation.

Enterprises are discovering a rededication to customers in ways rarely practised other than by the entrepreneurial firm. However, quality and restructuring methodologies have returned executives to their own raison d'etre by positioning customers at the heart of business survival. At the same time, cross-boundary alliances are demanding new partnering techniques with all stakeholders, including customers. New initiatives are commonplace, but are generally without an understanding that something is fundamentally different between customer satisfaction and the success of your customers. This article introduces the concepts in ways that are easily practised. Simply stated, treat your customers as sources of knowledge, not someone to whom you solely deliver products and services. By practising value-system (rather than value-chain) strategies, companies can take advantage of the business opportunities afforded by a collaborative economy. Similarly, by defining Strategic Business Network (SBN's) rather than Strategic Business Units (SBU's), companies can leverage all available knowledge sources. Most importantly, a symbiotic relationship with consumers, customers or clients can help a company envision products and services for unarticulated needs and unserved markets. Companies which are practising new ways of interfacing with customers are realising significant business results. A profile of customer innovation at Steelcase North America provides an illustration of this new partnering relationship.

A relatively small sample of experts ($N=60$) working within the quantitative financial area completed two questionnaires measuring their personality and values. This study set out to determine how personality and motivation/work values predict subjective work success and organizational fit using the High Potential Traits Inventory (HPTI) and the Work Value Questionnaire (WVQ). Compared to the population norms, the “Quants” were higher on Curiosity and Conscientiousness but lower on Tolerance of Ambiguity and Risk-Taking Approach. The “Quants” scored higher than population norms on one facet of intrinsic motivation and all three of the extrinsic motivation. The results demonstrated that Conscientiousness and Intrinsic Motivation were both significant predictors of subjective work success. The results are discussed in terms of how to select, manage and promote “Quants”. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Background: A Delphi consensus was conducted to formulate an expert opinion on the definition of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) success, to provide a reference basis for clinical practice.

Methods: Chinese experts in assisted reproductive technology (ART) were surveyed using the Delphi method. Based on the literature related to IVF success, eight experts developed a framework of statements and items. A questionnaire was then distributed to 23 experts to canvas their opinions on these statements. If consensus was not achieved, the statement was revised and revoted upon until a consensus was reached.

Results: Consensus was reached for 19 statements related to the definition of IVF success, the most relevant of which are summarized as follows: (1) Goal of IVF treatment ($n=1$ statement): to attain a healthy live birth in the shortest possible time and with the lowest possible risks; (2) Definition of IVF success ($n=13$ statements): effectiveness, safety, and efficiency of IVF treatment should be included in the definition of success, with the cumulative live birth rate per ovarian stimulation cycle within 2 years being a performance indicator (PI) of success, and IVF success should be measured from a patient-centered perspective, including the patient’s burden and satisfaction. (3) Assurance of IVF success ($n=3$ statements): to provide evidence-based treatment and avoid the introduction of IVF add-ons into routine clinical practice without any clear evidence of benefit, optimize treatment quality by establishing and monitoring key PIs, and improving quality control systems. (4) Hurdles of IVF success ($n=2$ statements): cycle cancellation before oocyte pickup and treatment discontinuation after failed cycles are hurdles of success to IVF.

Conclusions: Based on the Delphi method, the expert opinion on the definition of IVF success has been formed, which could complement guidelines and may help improve treatment outcomes.

Our research examines the relationships among four factors thought to be important to new product developing organizations. Those factors include the speed with which product developers produce new products and bring them to market; the degree of integration among the various groups participating in the New Product Development (NPD) process; the proficiency with which the product developers perform their tasks; and the degree of success attained upon the completion of the NPD process. Market dynamism, or the degree of customer changeability, and market hostility, or the degree of market competitiveness, are thought to moderate the relationships among the four previously noted factors.

The research questions driving our investigation include: (1) Does NPD project success vary with NPD process speed?; (2) Does NPD speed vary across innovation types (new-to-the-world products, line extensions, etc.)?; (3) Does the strength of the relationships among NPD speed, organizational integration, NPD proficiency (overall and Fuzzy Front End [FFE]), and success vary with the degree of environmental dynamism (changing customer needs)?; and (4) Does the strength of the relationships among NPD speed, organizational integration, NPD proficiency (overall and FFE), and success vary with the degree of market hostility (competition)? We probed the electrical equipment, medical device, and heavy construction equipment industries to provide the data to address our research questions.

Our research suggests that the speed with which projects were completed in our sample did not vary between projects that were more or less successful. We also found that the speed with which projects were completed did not vary across various product categories (new-to-the-world, line extensions, etc.) of newly developed products for the industries studied. Primarily, we found that market dynamism moderates the relationship between NPD speed and NPD proficiency whereas environmental hostility mediates NPD speed and NPD proficiency, NPD speed and organizational integration, and NPD speed and new product market success.

Our data indicate that speed is not associated with NPD proficiency, degree of organizational integration, and new product success in less dynamic markets whereas speed has an inverse relationship with successfully entering new markets, the proficiency with which development and launch activities are performed, and the proficiency with which new product marketing strategies were implemented in more dynamic markets. Finally, we found that speed is inversely related to successfully entering new markets, overall NPD proficiency and organizational integration, pre-development stage proficiency and organizational integration, and development and launch proficiency and organizational integration in non-hostile (competitive) environments whereas we found no significant relationships between these factors and speed in hostile environments. We provide several implications for both scholars and NPD managers.

Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of trust in KM initiatives. However, very few have been conducted to quantify its effect and its relationship with other KM factors. The purpose of this study is to start filling this gap. Data from 101 US organizations involved in KM were collected. For each organization the level of usage of different KM tools and practices was assessed and the main KM approach adopted by the organization (codification vs. personalization) was estimated. In addition, the level of organizational trust and the level of success of the KM initiative were assessed. Eight hypotheses were postulated to study the relationships between the above three factors. We present that trust and the personalization approach have a significant influence on KM initiative success.