Book: Barabassi's Law of Success. It is not the science of success but the science of "success."

Hello, the book I'm going to share with you today is called The Barabass law of success. As a special reminder, this book is not a science of success, but a science of "success".

"Success" has always been a frequently spoken but vague topic. When it comes to success, there are too many reasons we can think of, such as hard work, luck, talent, and so on. But what this book examines is not a successful case, but through a large amount of data collection and analysis, to examine what factors drive "success" in the secular sense.

What is "success in the secular sense"? In his book, the author defines it as "the reward we earn from the community to which we belong." For example, if you are a writer and you feel that you are writing well, have ideas and depth, but its sales are very poor, then this is not called success in the secular sense. Your book can become a hot bestseller, have a large number of fans, be recognized by society as a good writer, and earn a lot of money through it, which is called success in the secular sense. That is to say, the "success" studied in this book is not defined by individuals, but by society as a whole.

Speaking of this, it naturally begs the question: can this kind of success in the secular sense, the factors behind the back, really be measured by a scientific means? The answer is true.

The author of the book is Barabas, mentioned in the title, who is himself a top expert on social networks. His full name is Albert-Lázlázló Barabassi, and he is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Notre Dame and a professor at the Center for Complex Networks Research at Northeastern University. His other two works, "Outbreak" and "Link", have also been interpreted in the [Listen to this book every day] column.

Barabassi's team collected data on success in various fields, including art, academia, sports, business, etc., and then analyzed them on a larger scale. For example, they counted all the papers that have ever been published, tracked the academic careers of all scholars over a century, counted the weekly sales of all books in the United States, analyzed what made each book a bestseller and achieved commercial success; they also obtained information from galleries and museums around the world to examine the growth of contemporary artists, and so on. Through the analysis of these data, the authors found that some successful models are indeed universal, and there are indeed laws to follow for success.

So next, I'll break it into three parts to share the book with you. In the first part, we asked, is there an inevitable link between personal ability and success? The same are masters, why some people can be famous, some people are unknown. In the second part, we will focus on one question: Can a person's success be predicted? What determines future success? The third part is, how do we view the success of a team, a collective? Why in most cases, a team's success requires diversity, but the credit is often attributed to one person.

Part I

Okay, let's look at the first part, what exactly is the relationship between personal ability and success?

First of all, from our own point of view, we usually study hard and work hard, to a large extent, to improve our own ability. I believe that most people believe that the stronger the ability, the more successful it is. But is this really the case? Does performance of ability have a decisive significance for a success? Before answering this question, let's look at an example from a book:

During world war I, the German army included a pilot named von Richterhofen, who was extremely effective, shooting down a total of 80 enemy aircraft in his 3-year flying career. According to official statistics, this is more than any other ace pilot in World War I who shot down more planes.

But even more impressive is not his dazzling record. For ordinary pilots, they will try to be as hidden as possible when performing their missions, and it is best to make sure that the enemy is in the open and I am in the dark, so as to maximize their chances of survival. But this von Richterhofen did exactly the opposite. He painted his plane a dazzling big red, and whenever the plane crossed the sky, it would be a beautiful landscape. Not only can one's own people recognize it at a glance, but the enemy can also see it clearly. From this, he earned a resounding nickname: "Red Baron".

The story of the Red Baron's dominance of the battlefield has been passed down for more than a century, and the scope extends far beyond Germany. He has more than 30 books on his subject, and his characters have appeared in Hollywood movies, comic strips and documentaries. His name, stretching from the shelves of war lovers, stretched all the way to the freezers of grocery stores. If you're abroad, you can even play the "Red Baron" flight simulator while eating the "Red Baron" brand frozen pizza. It's so famous.

At first glance, you might think that the example of the Red Baron doesn't just confirm the prevailing assumption that strong performance leads to success. If you, like the Red Baron, performed the mission flawlessly, completed eye-catching aerial stunts, and hit the target accurately, then your ability to perform best in the field you are engaged in. You will be remembered for centuries by people who are far away.

From elementary school, we were taught that the best strategy for us to emerge was to strive for perfect performance. The role models we worship, the famous athletes, writers, scientists, and entrepreneurs, all seem to follow the same pattern of success. But you know what? There are a lot of people who are just as good at what they do, and you haven't even heard of them. Take René Fangke, for example.

Who is Funk? He was a French pilot during World War I. Compared to the Red Baron, Fangke's combat effectiveness is stronger. The Red Baron had lost three battles, the last of which cost him his life. And Fangke and his plane were never injured by enemy fire. The Red Baron's tactic is to shoot wildly at enemy planes at high altitudes and suppress the enemy with crazy attacks. And Fangke shot down an enemy plane, rarely more than 5 shells, and the plane he operated, like a butterfly, deftly flew up and down like a butterfly as it quickly evaded predators.

It can be said that whether it is the record or driving skills, Fangke's ability is above the Red Baron, at least equal. But what we know about Fang Ke is limited to a hard-to-find autobiography and a few descriptions scattered around. He was forgotten by the times.

Why is that? If the performance of ability determines whether a person is successful or not, then why is it that the same ace pilot, one can be remembered by future generations, while the other is drowned in history?

Through a large amount of data collation and analysis, Professor Barabassi came to the conclusion that your success is not determined by "you", but by "we". That is, your success does not depend on your ability to perform, but on society, and how society perceives your ability to perform. This definition of success is the basic premise and starting point for success in this book.

The Success of the Red Baron was more about the network he was in, about the political and social events that took place during the war than in how many planes he shot down. Many people remember him because he once played a crucial role in German propaganda of the war machine. His fame depends on those who desperately want a hero to inspire the collective spirit. It was the public that reacted to the Red Baron's performance, creating a myth about him. The network he's on finds him useful, so chooses to amplify him.

So far, we've come to the conclusion that performance is important, and it determines whether you can become a master in a field. But it's not the most important factor in determining your success. What determines your success is more about the role of social networks.

Of course, with the example of a Red Baron alone, it is not enough to support this view. Let's take a look at what research the authors did to reach such a conclusion.

Let's start with sports. What are the key factors for success in the world of sports? Barabasbas's team spent two years studying the relationship between the level of competition of players in tennis and what we define as success. The research team brought together the results of each tennis player from 2008 to 2015, recording all of each player's wins and losses, including the points earned in each match. Ultimately they found that the better the player's performance, the more Wikipedia hits about the player and the more popular it became to the public. And the quality of the record is almost the only factor that determines popularity. That is, in tennis, the better your grades, the closer you are to success in the secular sense.

The results of this study tell us that the success of tennis depends on the only factor - strong personal ability. At least on the pitch, the principle of "hard work pays off" is true. If you're an athlete and want to be successful, you need to perfect your motor skills. Similarly, you can't be a successful lawyer without solid legal knowledge; you can't be a successful engineer without a deep foundation in structural engineering. Strong performance of ability is indeed driving success.

But if we switch our attention to another field, like if you're an artist, success is more than just capable. There is a very important problem that the performance of artists cannot be counted and measured in the same way as the winners and losers of sports competitions. We can measure an athlete's ability by counting the outcomes of a large number of matches, because the stronger your ability, the greater the chance of winning the game, which is not much to say. But what measures an artist's performance? Judging the quality of a work is a very subjective thing, and everyone may have a different opinion. In this case, what is the artist's success?

The Barabassian team has collected the creative experiences of 500,000 artists around the world from 1980 to 2016. The data contains details of tens of thousands of exhibitions held by more than 14,000 museums and nearly 8,000 museums over a 35-year period, as well as information on nearly 3 million works of art sold at auction houses during the same period. They found that the success of artists depends mainly on the following factors, and these factors are related to social networks:

First, if you want to be a successful artist, your work needs to be exhibited in the most influential galleries and museums in the art world. For example, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum of Art, the Gagosian Gallery in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and so on. Once your work is exhibited at any of these companies, you are like stepping on a successful carousel, and your work is destined to sell well and the price will skyrocket.

Second, these first-class art galleries and exhibition halls, which are frequently connected internally, form a closed network. If you work with one of them, the other will open the door for you as well. However, if your work is initially exhibited in small galleries outside of this network, it is unfortunate, and there is a good chance that your entire career will be confined to these small galleries, and it will be difficult to enter the world-class art network.

Third, once you succeed, all stakeholders involved in your success will try to keep your success going. If someone pays $1 million for your work, both the collector and the museum will try to appreciate the painting because it's in the interest of all of you.

You see, in the art world, success depends a lot on whether you can get into the top professional network. From this, the author tells us that in some areas, the ideas that we take for granted, such as success depending on the accumulation of step by step, seem to be useless. If grades can be measured in all areas of expertise like tennis, this idea still works. But if we can't prove that we're the best in our field, the best thing for you to do is to put yourself in the established professional network.

That's the first part I'm going to talk about, the first law of success that the Barabassi team came up with: if performance is measurable, performance drives success. But when capabilities can't be measured, social networks drive success.

Part II

In fact, professional tennis leagues and the arts are two extreme examples. One is that abilities can be measured precisely, and the other is the visual arts, where abilities cannot be measured. However, most occupations are somewhere between these two extremes. If you're a lawyer, a salesman, a teacher, or an investment banker, grades and networking are important, but in their respective fields, their importance varies.

In the final analysis, achieving excellent results in your field is the basis for success. Without good grades, there is no chance of success. Once you have good grades and want to stand out from the crowd, social networking is crucial. A person's ability and achievements are limited, but the success that the Internet brings to you can be unlimited. Just look at those superstars, the one who gets the most rewards is not necessarily the strongest person in the field, but to a large extent, it is the most famous person. A book by a star writer will most likely become a bestseller, but a newcomer writer will, in most cases, be ruthlessly crushed.

Speaking of which, you might ask, if I'm not a superstar, just a fledgling newcomer in the industry, do I have a chance to succeed in one fell swoop? Or what factors will play a role in future success? In the second part, we will answer this question.

After research, Barabassi's team found that there are two factors that can affect future success: initial success and social adaptability.

Let's talk about each one by one, let's look at the initial success first. In the early stages of a project' existence, it is crucial to be able to give priority to widespread recognition. A large number of data show that works that receive praise as soon as they come out have a much larger proportion of success over time than works that were obscure at the beginning. So, first impressions matter. If you are a newcomer to a field, if you can get praise in the industry in a relatively short period of time, it will greatly improve the probability of success.

The author mentions an example in the book: British best-selling author Roger Elory has just published a new novel called Silently I Believe in Angels. Not long after its publication, a user named "Jones" wrote a book review on Amazon's website, which read: "I really don't need to say anything more about the plot of this book." There are passages and chapters in the book that make me can't help but stop, following the author sometimes trembling, sometimes falling into contemplation. You have to read it two or three times to really appreciate the depth of the language. What an amazing book. ”

This is a fairly high rating for a new book, and it is the first review. This initial affirmation is of great help to the future success of the novel. Before people read the novel, the user, Jones, is already telling other readers: This is a good book, and you should read it too. Now, the new book has sold more than 1 million copies in a row around the world, making it Elori's most successful book.

Hearing this, if the story is that Elori relied on one of the earliest book reviews to gain an advantage in the first place and lay the foundation for success later, it would be too simple and not convincing enough to demonstrate the importance of initial success. But what if I told you that this user, called "Jones," is the same person as the writer Elori? Yes, "Jones" is a pseudonym for Elori, a name he uses to praise his work and disparage his competitors. In fact, this trick is not only used by Elori alone, it is common in various industries, and there is a special word to describe this morally improper behavior - vest.

Do vests really work? When we make any decision, from buying a dress online to checking into a hotel, we subconsciously look at the reviews. We take it for granted that the system is accurate, fair and reliable, but the "vest" behavior calls into question. Can manipulating the initial evaluation system really increase the success rate of a book by greatly?

There are scientists who have done experiments to investigate this phenomenon. The scientist manipulated the "uplink" and "downside votes" commented on on a popular news-compendium website. If you vote "up" for a comment, you think the comment is useful or visionary; if you vote "down" for a comment, you think the comment is redundant and worthless. The results of the study found that if you give an "upward vote" for a comment in a row at the beginning, there is no doubt that the comment will be more and more recognized later. Experiments have indeed shown that initial success is important, and that the function of the adult can reproduce itself. Initial success is the first factor influencing future success.

However, the author also reminds us not to exaggerate the value of initial success. It's important, but it's by no means the only factor that determines how successful you can stay.

Let's go back to the experiment mentioned above. As I said, if you initially cast an "upward vote" for a comment in a row, then the comment will receive more and more recognition in a good chance. But what if, at the very beginning, a valuable comment is given and a "downward vote" is cast continuously? Will this initial negative review quickly turn it into garbage? Or, if you deliberately give negative comments to other competitors at the beginning, will you achieve the goal of killing competitors?

The answer is no. Experimenters used the same method to give valuable comments "down votes", and did not see sustained negative reviews. On the contrary, after a certain period of time, other users of the site will still vote "up" for this comment. Reason prevails and negative feedback is eliminated. The results of the experiment tell us that the initial advantage is largely an important thrust of success, but it refuses to serve those who specialize in crooked ways. An initial good impression is crucial to success, but even if there is no initial success, it does not mean that you will sink into it.

There is a more important factor in determining future success, that is, "social adaptability". The so-called "social adaptability" refers to the intrinsic quality of a work and a company, that is, the extent to which it can beat competitors and gain social recognition under the same conditions.

Google, for example, didn't have a high level of recognition when it first came out in 1997, when the vast majority of people were using Altavista and Yahoo's search engines. But just 3 years later, Google has far surpassed other products. You will find that in the field of Internet search engines, Google did not have the initial advantage, but what determines its current success?

In fact, the answer is very simple, they are successful because of the unique intrinsic quality of the product, which helps them overcome the obstacles that come with the product's obscurity. Not only Google, but the author also says in the book, a search engine that can guide users to more relevant URLs, a more efficient and reliable aircraft, a better-working drug, and a beer that tastes better, they can not only compete with huge opponents, but also win the competition, because they are more dynamic and better adapted to current challenges. This is the advantage of "social adaptability".

For what exactly determines future success, the Barabassi team gave this formula: future success = initial success X social adaptability. Initial recognition is an important thrust of success. But what determines whether you can always succeed is more social adaptation.

Part III

In the two sections above, we highlight the factors that affect individual success. However, a large part of our usual work is not acting alone, and we need to cooperate with others. A great product, a successful company, is often behind the efforts of a team. How do I see the success of a team? In the next part, we will talk about this problem.

First of all, the Balabassi team found through research that a successful team has the following characteristics: there is a strong general manager who is responsible for the team members; at the same time, the team members must have their own strengths and reflect the differences; and they can also communicate face-to-face and equally. I believe that you have heard these qualities to a greater or lesser extent before, and I will not dwell on them here.

In this part, we focus on a question: Why, in most cases, the success of a team requires diversity, but the credit is often attributed to a few people, or even one person?

The winners of the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics were two scientists, Rubia and Van der Meer. However, the paper's authors have a total of 137 scientists, while Rubia and van der Meyer rank 105th and 126th, respectively. Why did these two low-ranking scientists finally win the Nobel Prize?

To answer this question, The Barabass team developed an algorithm that could easily pinpoint each Nobel laureate from a long list of contributing scientists. The mechanism behind this algorithm is actually very simple, and it focuses on how the paper is cited and the signatures of the paper collaborators. A large amount of data shows that the final honor has little to do with who does what work. The "credit recipients" in a scientific research team are usually always scientists who continue to work in the field. That is, in most cases, the team's credit is not distributed according to the performance of ability, but based on the opinions of others. The reason why those who have won the favor of the majority of people is because he has occupied the field for a long time.

Hearing this, you may ask, if I am a fledgling novice in this field, is it almost impossible to face this situation, and my efforts are all about making wedding dresses for others? The author's answer is: yes and no.

When you're just getting into the field, working with someone with a big name will help you gain experience and gain initial recognition in the industry. Just entering a field, it is necessary to make a wedding dress for cattle people in the industry, which is the best way in the initial stage.

But, at some point, you also need to be independent. In the book, the author says that if we are always in the shadow of others, working on piecemeal projects, or running around on many different research projects, we will gradually be marginalized. So, a better approach is either to work deeply in one field and be able to stand alone in that field. Or circle a field in an untouched area and build a reputation for yourself in that field.

In this part, we say what Barablos thinks about "team success": team success requires diversity and balance, but the credit is often attributed to one person.

summary

Finally, a brief introduction to success and age. I believe many people have heard Einstein's famous statement: "If a person does not make an important scientific contribution before the age of 30, then he may never contribute anything." This may sound pessimistic, but it is also realistic. A large number of data reports tell us that many scientists' breakthrough work is indeed early in their careers. This may confirm a common belief that creativity is the prerogative of young people.

However, the Barabass team told us that it didn't seem to be the case. By examining the careers of scientists, they found that a person's creativity does not decline with age. Because research shows that for every scientist, at every stage of life, the probability of achieving a major achievement is equal. As we age, the reason for the decrease in the probability of success is not creativity, but production. Young people are constantly working hard and will not be discouraged by failure or lack of attention, so the probability of success will naturally be higher.

Well, the essence of the book "Barabassa's Law of Success" is shared here for you. To summarize:

The author emphasizes that whether a person can achieve success in the secular sense is not determined by the individual, but by society as a whole. Personal abilities and achievements are important, but don't overlook the role of social networks. In addition, the initial stage of recognition will promote future success with a high probability, but more importantly, improve social adaptability, that is, inherent competitiveness. Team success requires diversity and balance, but the credit is often attributable to one person. You can work deep in the industry until you occupy the field. Of course, you can also find another way to build a reputation in new areas. Finally, the authors tell us that success can happen at any time and age, as long as you persevere.