Naked Strategy 2 - Facebook, Fortune and Fate

Are super-rich CEOs smart or lucky? Is being lucky a skill? Can sleeping in late make you more money than getting in early? Is being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing something you can learn?

Join Max McKeown and Laurence Haughton as they make each other laugh while discovering the secrets of Facebook, Fortune, & Fate.

So here's the question. Has Facebook become the phenomenon it is thanks to founder Mark Zuckerberg's brilliant strategy or thanks to his knack for landing lucky breaks – and his unwillingness to get up in the morning, even for a meeting with Microsoft. And was it by accident or design that Yahoo's share price topped $400 in its heyday under founder Jerry Yang?

Max argues that luck is a hugely under-estimated force in the business world and that many enterprises owe much of their success to good luck rather than good strategy.

Of course, this begs the question, is it just luck that makes somebody lucky? Or are lucky people really different? Can luck actually be "taught" – as one psychologist believes it can. What are the things we can do to make ourselves more lucky - and what type of people can be guaranteed to have no luck at all.

All of which illustrates the way that luck can be made (self-fulfilling prophecy) through attitude, expectation, and reframing catastrophe.

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• Tim that's a great question (Was Zuckerberg lucky, or was it simply a moment when preparaton and opportunity came together?) Pasteur thought that good fortune was the result of both. I think he was encourging everyone to prepare while they wait to "get lucky." But as for the Facebook founder at this point it appears to be the same as with Cuban, Yang, Musk, and so many other business "black swans." It's mostly opportunity. Their second act will tell their level of preparation.

  And Tim that's something (They end up believing it was nothing to do with luck) every business person need to remember. "Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising."

  laurence haughton, www.laurencehaughton.com

• Made me laugh too... on the downside it would be terrible to wake up in the afterlife and realise that a little less work and a pair of sandles could have made me billions richer... :(

  Pete Simmons, Lancaster

• Speaking of luck, business luck is profoundly different to 'everyday luck'. It's just not the same as finding a £10 note on the pavement. In business, luck has a fascinating by-product on the people involved. They end up believing it was nothing to do with luck. Just their own blinding brilliance that brought about their good fortune.

  Tim Jarvis, UK

• Was Zuckerberg lucky, or was it simply a moment when preparaton and opportunity came together?

  Tim Jarvis, UK