Reviewing the Science of Success

The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-László Barabási

My initial impression of this book was one of skepticism. The Universal Laws of Success, really? Most books with this sweeping of a title over-promise and under-deliver, offering a smattering of anecdotes to surprise and delight without really defining or systematically applying the principles in question.

Fortunately this latest popular title by physicist-turned-network-scientist Albert-László Barabási proves an exception as this book finds a groove between academic rigor and real-life relevance.

Network science is cutting-edge research and Barabasi has a knack distilling his respected scientific findings to something suitable for reading on an airplane or at a coffee shop. By the time you are done reading, the “Universal Laws of Success” may still feel a sweeping statement, but you cannot say that Barabasi has reached this conclusion through anecdote or logical sleight of hand.

As someone with an academic training of my own, I could see the veins of “academese” pulsing through the pages of this book. Academics love nothing if not definitions and while this exercise can be tedious it is often necessary to set the stage for any kind of systematic review of a subject.

“The popular definition of success,” Barabasi thus argues, “reinforces the perception that ‘success’ is as loose a concept as “love.” The topic’s vagueness kept scientists away—they assumed that it couldn’t be studied.” Thus the author is quite careful to define his terms and how they will be measured.

And as a network scientist, we might expect that Barabasi comes about his findings from network analysis. But this execution is an innovation of itself, as Barabasi argues: “Realizing that success is a collective phenomenon throws that perception out the window.”

Elaborating on that, the author writes: “Your success isn’t about you and your performance. It’s about us and how we perceive your performance. Or, to put it simply, your success is not about you, it’s about us.” So while intrinsic satisfaction gained from personal mastery is a noble effort, this kind of success, the author admits, is beyond the scope of his research, as framed by his definitions and methods.

While this academic-infused perspective of success may seem somewhat incongruent to one’s everyday perspective of success, it makes for some powerful research. Barabasi derives five “universal laws” of success, on the way introducing concepts like “fitness” and “popularity” and offering some algebraic equations for how these concepts inter-relate.

It’s hard to call the findings “anecdotal” as they are backed by pretty mind-boggling research. By mining datasets as huge as Wikipedia and comprehensive statistics from professional tennis, modern art galleries and more, Barabasi has some rigorous research to draw from while writing this book.

Why are wine judges inconsistent in their scoring? Why do the last performers at concert competitions almost always win? What makes some researchers win a Nobel Prize while other perhaps more-deserving researchers do not? Walk through these cases and more in the book.

As I said, this book, while digestible is steeped in academic terms and definitions. Some of it goes a little too far, even for me. Take, for example, the idea of “preferential attachment” which explains that things which fare successful early on become more successful over time due to that early success. To me this just sounds like a positive feedback loop and indeed the Wikipedia page does mention that term — along with lots of other equations and research, so it’s obviously more complicated than that to researchers, but for a lay reader it was a bridge too far in this book.

And, as you would expect in any business book, there is some lighthearted motivational talk in The Formula. Take its fifth law: “Success can come at any time as long as we are persistent.” Yes, we get the usual anecdotes about late success in life, like Ray Kroc and Alan Rickman. You get these kinds of anecdotes in every business book.

But what distinguishes The Formula from the usual business book is it moves beyond providing delightful anecdotes. The premise of the book comes from research and is backed up primarily from research by a highly-respected researcher. Thus a book about “the science of success” makes satisfactory reading for both those interested in science and success and comes well-recommended.