Illusory Superiority Dartmouth Tuck business professor Sydney Finkelstein, author of Why Smart Executives Fail, observed that there are two major recurring themes in major business disasters: “the remarkable tendency for CEOs and executives of new ventures to believe that they are absolutely right, and the tendency to overestimate the quality of managerial talent by relying on track record, especially in situations that differ markedly from the present new venture.” 32
