Bill Gates is one of those names that college dropouts often throw around to keep the dream alive.

“Yeah I flunked out of everything, but so did Bill and he has done pretty OK since then.”

There are, of course, a few major flaws in that line of thinking. It might take business savvy and some shrewd decisions to become the world’s richest man, but it also takes a massive amount of luck.

The BBC took a closer look at Gates’ rise to the top and here’s some of what they had to say:

Exceptional performances tend to occur in exceptional circumstances. Top performers are often the luckiest people, who have benefited from being at the right place and right time. They are what we call outliers, whose performances may be examples set apart from the system that everyone else works within.

We break briefly to say that you can’t mention the word ‘outliers’ and not talk about Malcolm Gladwell’s book. Read THIS.

Back to Bill:

Even if you could imitate everything Gates did, you would not be able to replicate his initial good fortune.

For example, Gates’s upper-class background and private education enabled him to gain extra programming experience when less than 0.01% of his generation then had access to computers. His mother’s social connection with IBM’s chairman enabled him to gain a contract from the then-leading PC company that was crucial for establishing his software empire.

This is important because most customers who used IBM computers were forced to learn how to use Microsoft’s software that came along with it. This created an inertia in Microsoft’s favour…

Microsoft’s success and market share may differ from the rest by several orders of magnitude but the difference was really enabled by Gate’s early fortune, reinforced by a strong success-breeds-success dynamic.

Right place, right time, right circumstance – or something like that.

They do give some credit where credit is due, finishing off their article with a shout out:

Being in the right place (succeeding in a context where early outcome has an enduring impact) at the right time (having early luck) can be so important that it overwhelms merits. With this in mind there’s a good case that we shouldn’t just reward or imitate life’s winners and expect to have similar success. But there is a case that the winners should consider imitating the likes of Gates (who became a philanthropist) or Warren Buffet (who argues that richer Americans should pay higher taxes) who have chosen to use their wealth and success to do good things. The winners who appreciate their luck and do not take it all deserve more of our respect.

Still keen to flunk out of varsity and make your billions? Don’t let us stop you living the holiday and all that jazz.

[source:bbc]