Book of the Week: “Smart or Lucky?: How Technology Leaders Turn Chance Into Success”

This week’s Book of the Week, “Smart or Lucky?: How Technology Leaders Turn Chance Into Success” is  extremely relevant and informative as it provides the key to becoming successful in today’s technology era. Judith Hurwitz, President and CEO of Hurwitz & Associates, a strategy consulting and research firm focused on emerging computing technologies, has years of experience in the field and is sharing her advice in her new book. To purchase your own copy, click here. Check out Judith Hurwitz’s guest post on our blog discussing her unique argument about luck in the business world, and her strategies to riding the technology wave. Read more from Judith Hurwitz on her acclaimed technology blog on her website. 

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To be successful in any highly competitive market, you have to be smart, but you also have to be lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time. And you have to be smart enough to realize which you are.

Using her insider experiences with hundreds of successful and failed technology companies over three decades, two bubbles, and one burst, Judith Hurwitz shows how the most successful entrepreneurs understand the value of the combination of luck and smarts—and make it work for them. Those who fail are the ones who may be lucky but get complacent, believe they’re the smartest players in the market, or fail to make the changes needed to sustain leadership.

Smart or Lucky? is for business leaders who are interested in learning what it takes to be successful in emerging markets and how to sustain success over the long term. It shows entrepreneurs how to recognize a lucky break and have the foresight to take advantage of it. Brimming with real-world lessons based on well-tested principles, this groundbreaking book explores why lightning doesn’t strike twice; how to supplant market leaders; how to walk away from legacy products; how to avoid lemming-like conformity; why promising technologies fail; how to gain, win, and retain customers; and how floundering companies can come back from  near-death experiences.

Informative and highly detailed, Smart or Lucky? is a key resource for all business leaders and emerging entrepreneurs who want to understand how to stay nimble and succeed in complicated, competitive markets.

Praise for Smart or Lucky?

“Smart or Lucky? takes you on a fun ride through the information technology industry. Judith Hurwitz brings together a wealth of personal experience and historical fact in analyzing the successes and failures of tech companies. There are countless lessons to be taken away about corporate ignorance and corporate arrogance. ‘Luck’ or, in truth, rapidly changing market conditions, catches up with every company. The true strength of those companies that have survived and thrived has been a willingness to change and to allow the market, their customer, to guide them.”
- Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, Software & Systems, IBM

 “Judith Hurwitz is known for her talent at anticipating technology trends- and communicating their importance to business leaders. She’s done it again. This book has great insights on cloud computing and the massive shift underway that is profoundly changing everything.”
- Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com; and author, Behind the Cloud

“Judith Hurwitz deftly dissects dozens of winners and losers in the constantly churning tech industry, and offers concrete advice for entrepreneurs wanting to achieve and sustain success.”
- Don Tapscott, author, Wikinomics and Macrowikinomics

 “Judith provides valuable lessons on building sustainable technology companies and reminds us that initial spectacular market opportunities and brilliant execution are just table stakes in long-lasting market ownership.”
- Ann Winblad, managing director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

“Smart of Lucky? Is without a doubt a walk down memory lane with commentary that is concise and most of all insightful. It is hard to find someone who can write objectively about whether people are good or lucky in context with the most explosive era of information technology. This book clearly puts the reader in touch with consequences and events of those turbulent and dynamic years. I highly endorse Judith’s book as a must-read for anyone who wants to put sense into the mosaic of our industry.”
-Sam Greenblatt, Chief Technology Officer, Global Enterprices, Hewlett Packard Corporation