It's fun to read older business books like Built to Last and Good to Great that use the "let's study successful businesses to see what they do" methodology. It'

It's fun to read older business books like Built to Last and Good to Great that use the "let's study successful businesses to see what they do" methodology. It's fun because many of the companies featured in those books either are bankrupt today or facing some sort of existential difficulty. It's survivor bias bullshit wrapped up in feel-good propaganda and people eat it up every time. Study successful people and emulate them. Of course! How could we go wrong? Nevermind that the successful people are more likely to just be lucky or even just plain wrong about the reasons for their success. I attribute my success to hard work, getting up early, making steady progress every day, picking great people to work with, and staying ahead of the curve. Sounds great, right? But to really know if any of that matters, we have to study a large number of people who also profess to do exactly those things and see if they're way more successful than average. If they're not...well then I'm just wrong about the reasons for my own success and other factors are more important. It doesn't sell books though when your message is "in order to be successful you have to be naturally smart, tall, and attractive, work about as hard as everyone else, and be well-connected and lucky."