Chance I is completely impersonal; you can't influence it. Chance II favors those who have a persistent curiosity about many things coupled with an energetic willingness to experiment and explore. Chance III favors those with a background of sound knowledge plus abilities in observing, recalling, and quickly forming new associations. Chance IV favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors.
Andreessen's recap of Dr. James Austin's four kinds of luck.
"Keep on going and chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down." In a highly uncertain world, a bias to action is key to catalyzing luck—often preferable to thinking things through more thoroughly.
Chance II: motion stirs the pot and creates collisions.
Curious people are more likely to already have in their heads the building blocks for crafting a solution to any problem they encounter, versus the more 'intelligent' but less curious person trying to get by on logic and pure intellectual effort. This is why Andreessen hires for curiosity over intelligence.
Chance III applied to hiring.
Most creative people are better off with more life experience and journeys afield into seemingly unrelated areas, as opposed to more formal domain-specific education—at least if they want to create. Eccentric hobbies and a personal point of view are what generate Chance IV.
Chance IV and the case against narrow specialization.
"The lucky connections in Chance II might come to anyone with disposable energy as the happy by-product of any aimless, circular stirring of the pot, [but] the links of Chance IV can be drawn together and fused only by one quixotic rider cantering in on his own homemade hobby horse to intercept the problem at an odd angle."
Austin's distinction between generic motion-luck and idiosyncratic personal-luck.
By the time Chance IV occurs, the easy, more accessible problems have already been solved by conventional actions or other forms of chance. What remains is a tough core of complex, resistant problems—which yield to none but an unusual approach.
Why eccentricity matters: the hard problems left over require non-obvious angles.
If you are a manager and you have someone who is particularly good at synthesis—linking together multiple, disparate, apparently unrelated experiences on the fly—promote her as fast as you possibly can.
Practical management implication of Chance III.
