Luck of the Draw

This brief post is the result of my jury duty this past Monday and my waiting on hold with a government agency.  I found it ironical that I was finishing Taleb’s The Black Swan while sitting in the jury assembly room wondering whether I’d be called to serve.  (If you haven’t read The Black Swan or its predecessor - Fooled by Randomness - yet, I highly recommend both if you spend any time trying to “predict” anything.  While one of my degrees is in fact in philosophy, I don’t think you need to be a philosopher to understand and appreciate either book.)  I have always believed that luck is where hard work and preparation meet opportunity…but you still need that opportunity to appear for that to be true AND you need to be able to identify and appreciate such opportunity for what it is before you can act.  The question I have struggled with for some time is whether the ability to identify and appreciate such opportunities is simply innate or can it be learned.  While I’ve seen and experienced my fair share of empirical and anecdotal evidence supporting both, I thought I’d open it up to all of you.  So, what do you think???