The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. He is a former physics professor at the University of Notre Dame. Today Albert is the Director of Northeastern University’s Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) associate member of the Center of Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and visiting professor at the Center for Network Science at Central European University.
He introduced in 1999 the concept of scale-free networks and proposed the Barabási–Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the World Wide Web or online communities.
Surprising to realize 13 years ago I was reading his book Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means. Link certainly proved very thought provoking. It has aged well since 2008. Based upon that experience I quickly read his followup Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do in 2010.
Albert addresses how you can now quantify success. This will differ obviously across markets adn professions, but the ties linking them together are quite interesting. There is a building block of his expertise in networks.
He devotes a chapter for each of his defined universal laws of success.
Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success.
In athletics networks will not help you. If you win the US Open Tennis championship it will not matter who you know. Your success will drive instant recognition.
Yet, one focus of Chapter 1 is the Red Barron who remains the most famous World War I fighter pilot. Yet, René Fonck a French pilot actually scored more kills. However grocery stores today have Red Barron pizza. There are Red Barron 3D computer games. Even Charlie Brown, the most famous children’s cartoon holds the Red Barron as a character for Snoopy. Performance truly drives success.
