Collective dynamics behind success

TL;DR

This paper reviews how collective dynamics influence success across various domains, highlighting mechanisms, biases, and the potential for predictive models, while emphasizing the need for further research on cultural and algorithmic impacts.

Contribution

It synthesizes recent interdisciplinary research on success, identifying key mechanisms, biases, and gaps, and advocates for future studies on cultural influences and causal methods.

Findings

Regularities in success dynamics across domains

Existence of biases challenging meritocracy

Potential for success prediction models

Abstract

Understanding the collective dynamics behind the success of ideas, products, behaviors, and social actors is critical for decision-making across diverse contexts, including hiring, funding, career choices, and the design of interventions for social change. Methodological advances and the increasing availability of big data now allow for a broader and deeper understanding of the key facets of success. Recent studies unveil regularities beneath the collective dynamics of success, pinpoint underlying mechanisms, and even enable predictions of success across diverse domains, including science, technology, business, and the arts. However, this research also uncovers troubling biases that challenge meritocratic views of success. This review synthesizes the growing, cross-disciplinary literature on the collective dynamics behind success and calls for further research on cultural influences, the origins of inequalities, the role of algorithms in perpetuating them, and experimental methods to further probe causal mechanisms behind success. Ultimately, these efforts may help to better align success with desired societal values.