Luck

Business Pundit has a good post asking Does Luck Matter in Business?

Napoleon, when evaluating generals for promotion, would often ask, "is he lucky?" Not a perverse question at all when you consider what he said about battle in his Maxims:

#95
War is composed of nothing but accidents, and, although holding to general principles, a general should never lose sight of everything to enable him to profit from these accidents; that is the mark of genius.
In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it.

Exploiting accidents is the "mark of genius". To the outsider it will often look like luck.

As BP says:

It seems that luck, by definition, should be random, but I have to second guess that when I hear comments like "that guy has all the luck." Maybe that guy was just well prepared when the right opportunity came along.