unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

446. The Science of Success with Albert-László Barabási

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Episode notes

In order to study the science of success, you have to also study the science of failure. How much is performance connected to success? How do you leverage networks in your domain successfully?

Albert-László Barabási is a professor of network science at Northeastern University and the author of books like, Linked: The New Science Of Networks Science Of Networks and The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success. 

Albert and Greg chat about the evolution of network science, measuring performance vs. success, how to strategically network in your field, and the surprising findings about creativity and age.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Distinguishing success vs. performance

14:24: Performance is really about you, and your success is about us. And what do I mean by that? If we look very carefully, everything that is performance typically links to individual qualities. How fast can you run? How good of a research paper can you write? And how good of a speaker are you? And so on and so forth. However, every measure of success is really given by the community, whether that's feedback, acknowledgment, adoration, money, whether that’s likes, it's always a communal measure, right? You don't pay yourself; you don't like yourself—or you could do that, right, but not at the scale that really leads to success. It's really the community that provides that to you. Therefore, if you want to understand success, at the beginning, we do need to distinguish these two things, and you need to ask yourself: How do you measure performance? How do you measure success? And when and how is the relationship between them?

The social nature of success

32:42: This is the distinction between performance and success because success is a collective measure. We give success to you, so you need to come to us and make sure that we understand what you do. We can compare it to others who do different, similar things, and ultimately, we can acknowledge you and reward you for that. This is a collective phenomenon, and you have to work with the community; it's not a lonely journey any longer.

Is performance really measurable?

16:33: Performance is not a one-dimensional quantity. There's so many dimensions of performance when it comes to teaching, when it comes to having a podcast, when it comes to curing people, right? And hence, it becomes virtually unmeasurable. Yet, success is not unmeasurable, right? So, in most of us, the vast majority of humanity lives and works in professions where there is not an objective measure of performance, but there are very clear measures of success. And so really, all of the formula is really about how and when do these connect.

On understanding how success emerges

30:00: If you understand the forces that act on how success emerges, then you can actually start thinking about that in the domain where you are. What really matters, and where do you put your focus? I always think of these roles not as a way to manipulate the system—because you can't manipulate the system, right?—but rather as guidance on where to put your efforts.

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