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

Author:Albert-László Barabási [Barabási, Albert-László]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2018-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Social influence is essential for human survival. It’s probably what kept us from eating the poisonous mushrooms again and again, or getting too friendly with a tiger. For good reason, our judgments are cued by the views and experiences of those in our social orbit. We use our peers’ opinions to evaluate everything from brands of ice cream to works of art. If a product is well liked, we assume it’s superior. If it’s disliked, we assume it stinks. Popularity breeds popularity, just as success breeds success.

But the MusicLab’s most fascinating discovery emerges from one of the experiment’s more peculiar findings: in rare cases, exceptional fitness can defy social influence. Indeed, the control group’s favorite—a song called “She Said,” by Parker Theory—made a remarkable comeback. The teenagers faced with an inverted chart saw it at the bottom initially, but then its download numbers crept up. Soon after the billboard was inverted, “She Said” began a slow but steady climb from the lowest rung on the ladder. With time, preferential attachment sent it scurrying toward the top. Like a “pulled up by the bootstraps” fable, despite being the most penalized contender, it got back on track in the race. “She Said” shows how strong performance can recover from adverse social influence and rise in triumph, as predictably buoyant as oil floating on vinegar.

The recovery of “She Said” tells us that preferential attachment, the engine that drives the “success breeds success” dynamic encountered in the previous chapter, does not act in isolation when it comes to success. It works hand in hand with a product’s fitness. “She Said” is an example of the Third Law of Success:

Previous success × fitness = future success.

Fitness and the rich-get-richer phenomenon don’t clash but are entangled, working together to influence our choices and affect our outcomes. Crowds can push the merely good to unearned fame, but they’ll rarely get wholeheartedly behind the terrible. A false perception of popularity can boost a bad song, but it will never become a collective favorite. And when performance and preferential attachment harmonize, as they did in the case of “She Said,” they create the perfect storm for success.

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