Entrepreneurial luck is not exogenous because skills create the opportunities that look accidental

Evidence

It is not only that chance and skill are likely to be complements in that ‘those initiatives that embody a superior business model or technology are more likely to find the “luck” they need’ (Bresnahan et al., 2001, p. 842), leading us to question the degree to which chance is exogenous (if good entrepreneurs may create their own opportunity) (Feldman, 2001), but also that there might be severe constraints preventing entrepreneurs from successfully exploiting such ‘accidents’. Take the case of the important part played by Istanbul’s minorities in the emergence of the cluster as an example. An interpretation of this fact as a ‘chance event’ and ‘the ultimate cause’ explaining the emergence of the cluster would miss some key contextual circumstances such as the ways Muslim Turks embraced cinema and eventually became a part of the cluster, as discussed above. In fact, historical accidents might be happening all the time, and clarifying the circumstances under which they might successfully be exploited by the cluster participants seems to be the real challenge in front of us. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 844

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Milgrom/Champagne Fairs material on institutions as problem-solvers rather than mere products of history; also to Greif’s contextual causality.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘The Myth of the Lucky Founder’ — why attributing industry origins to chance events lets us skip the contextual conditions that actually made the accident exploitable.
• DEEPTHINKING: Systematically dissolves the historical-accident explanation for path creation by reframing chance and skill as complements rather than opposites, forcing a rethinking of how paths ever begin.