Bush changed national research the same way Vail changed corporate research. Both recognized that the big ideas—the breakthroughs that change the course of science, business, and history—fail many times before they succeed. Sometimes they survive through the force of exceptional skill and personality. Sometimes they survive through sheer chance. In other words, the breakthroughs that change our world are born from the marriage of genius and serendipity. The magic of Bush and Vail was in engineering the forces of genius and serendipity to work for them rather than against them. Luck is the
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