This has been on my mind lately as well, for some reason. That, and the point of this story http://sivers.org/horses which is basically that even after the fact, it's really hard to know anything[1].
I don't know if it's just from growing older but I feel a lot more humble when looking at peoples ideas and actions than earlier. I literally feel that I have no clue whether they will succeed or not whereas I used to quickly get quite strong feelings in one direction or the other. In one way, this feels more mature and zen but at the same time, it annoys me a bit. I feel that conviction is the trait of a leader and something I need to possess if I want to convince anybody to engage in my projects. Maybe I'll just practice faking it and hope they didn't read this comment :-)
Edit: [1] One of my favorite examples of this is in Felix Denis' book How To Get Rich where he describes that the problem with Apple is Steve Jobs. This was written 7 years ago when Apple was struggling and it looked like Steve Jobs was driving it into the ground with his stubbornness. (The book is excellent by the way, in spite of the tacky sounding title)
Thank you for posting a link to that story. It reminds me a bit of Boethius:
"It's my belief that history is a wheel. 'Inconstancy is my very essence,' says the wheel. Rise up on my spokes if you like but don't complain when you're cast back down into the depths. Good time pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it's also our hope. The worst of time, like the best, are always passing away."
My intuition is that it's very random. A business professor and economist (Luigi Zingales) once commented that lots of firms tend to find new ideas all at the same time. When the market is ripe and the arrows point in the same direction, everyone seems to find it. Execution is important, but a lot of randomness hits the process too.
I don't know if it's just from growing older but I feel a lot more humble when looking at peoples ideas and actions than earlier. I literally feel that I have no clue whether they will succeed or not whereas I used to quickly get quite strong feelings in one direction or the other. In one way, this feels more mature and zen but at the same time, it annoys me a bit. I feel that conviction is the trait of a leader and something I need to possess if I want to convince anybody to engage in my projects. Maybe I'll just practice faking it and hope they didn't read this comment :-)
Edit: [1] One of my favorite examples of this is in Felix Denis' book How To Get Rich where he describes that the problem with Apple is Steve Jobs. This was written 7 years ago when Apple was struggling and it looked like Steve Jobs was driving it into the ground with his stubbornness. (The book is excellent by the way, in spite of the tacky sounding title)