Forbes® Best Business Mistakes: How Today's Top Business Leaders Turned Missteps into Success

Chapter 17. R. J. KIRK

On Forbes 400 list of richest Americans

Co-founded New River Pharmaceuticals—sold for $2.6 billion

Senior managing director and CEO of Third Security, LLC

So there I was, having one of those typical days when you talk with a billionaire about parallel universes.

Excuse me? Yes, that's the kind of conversation that can occur when the wildly successful businessman R. J. Kirk starts talking. He's obviously smart. A law degree from the University of Virginia isn't bestowed on the intellectually lethargic. Nor is success in starting up companies and making tremendous profits from running them and then selling them. No, you don't become a self-made billionaire by pure luck. You must have done something right along the way. That makes it a bit curious when you hear him talk about the keys to success: that there aren't any. Or at least—and I want to pick the right words, because R.J. is very precise—you can't determine them.

"I'm at a loss to explain success," he says. "Just as a matter of proof, it's almost never possible to explain why something succeeded." And he thinks that most rich, successful people overestimate their own brilliance. "They usually draw the wrong inferences from their own success—one of which being there's a temptation to believe one is a great deal more intelligent than one truly is."

Such are the unconventional arguments made by a business professional in a position to comment on careers marked by financial achievement. "By sort of algorithmic fact, ...