The Formula

A smart, readable account of the unexpected scientific principles that drive success' - Financial Times The Formula is the groundbreaking book that reveals the indisputable scientific laws that turn achievements into success and shows how you can use them to your own advantage. In The Formula, Albert-László Barabasi, one of the world's leading experts on the science of networks, reveals the unspoken rules behind who gets ahead and why, and outline the five laws that govern this phenomenon and how we can use them to succeed. Drawing on Big Data research that covers everyone from the ace fighter pilot The Red Baron to graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat; Miles Davis and his recording of Kind of Blue to Marcel Duchamp and Tiger Woods, Barabasi shows why success can come at any time, as long as we are persistent, why in successful teams one person gets the lion's share of the credit and why the last interviewee almost always gets the job. Unveiling the scientific principles that drive success, and how to leverage them, Barabasi offers a new understanding of the very foundation of how people excel in today's society, and how to harness these principles for yourself.

Albert-László Barabási is the Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science at Northeastern University, where he directs the Center for Complex Network Research. He also holds appointments in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Central European University in Budapest. His work led to the discovery of scale-free networks, and proposed the Barabási-Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the WWW or online communities.

Introduction - Introduction: Success Isn't About You. It's About Us. Chapter - 1: The Red Baron and the Forgotten Ace Section - The First Law: Performance drives success, but when performance can't be measured, networks drive success. Chapter - 2: Grand Slams and College Diplomas Chapter - 3: The $2 Million Urinal Section - The Second Law: Performance is bounded, but success is unbounded. Chapter - 4: How Much Is a Bottle of Wine Worth? Chapter - 5: Superstars and Power Laws Section - The Third Law: Previous success x fitness = future success. Chapter - 6: Exploding Kittens and Sock Puppets Chapter - 7: The Ear of the Beholder Section - The Fourth Law: While team success requires diversity and balance, a single individual will receive credit for the group's achievements. Chapter - 8: Kind of Conventional, Kind of Innovative, Kind of Blue Chapter - 9: The Algorithm That Found the Overlooked Scientist Section - The Fifth Law: With persistence success can come at any time. Chapter - 10: Einstein's Error