Smart Luck: And the Seven Other Qualities of Great Entrepreneurs

Why does one entrepreneur succeed when another fails? What are the characteristics that define our top business builders? And what has Richard Branson's mother got to do with it all? In a laconic guide to the winners and wannabes of enterprise, award-winning writer Andrew Davidson tracks down the top wealth creators in their natural habitat..... Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, David Potter, James Dyson, Luke Johnson, Brent Hoberman, Charles Dunstone, Mike Lynch, Simon Woodroffe, Reuben Singh, Guy Hands, Richard Rogers........ Entrepreneurs . All rich, most famous and without exception completely fascinating to the rest of us. What sets them apart? What made them what they are? Why did they succeed when so many have failed? Everybody wants to know why life's winners are so successful, and behind every entrepreneur is a story. Look at enough of those stories and themes begin to emerge: brilliant but eccentric parents, sibling rivalry, financial hardship in childhood, a sense of separateness, an abnormal desire to be better than anybody else. Andrew Davidson has interviewed dozens of leading entrepreneurs and asked the questions we all want to ask. Here he pulls together all the information, and takes an overall look at the bigger picture and what we can learn from the living giants who did it their way. Smart Luck interprets the psychology of success, telling the entrepreneurs' stories in their own words and those of the people closest to them. 'With his notebooks and tape recorder overflowing, [Andrew Davidson] has parlayed a career's worth of probing into what may be the most entertaining book on business published this year.' 'The prose is breathless, the subjects are opinionated and the colour writing is so good it is difficult to remember that this is meant to be a serious book about entrepreneurs. There isn't a dull chapter to be found .' Sunday Times, Book of the Week