Business is not and never will be a science.

There is no el-dorado magic equation for success. And if such a formula existed, as soon as people became aware of it, it wouldn’t offer any advantage — in business, playing the game has a nasty habit of changing the rules.

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith was right when he said, “There is nothing reliable to be learned about making money. If there were, study would be intense and everyone with a positive IQ would be rich.” 

That doesn’t mean we don’t employ something akin to the scientific method — testing ideas with experiments — and it doesn’t mean there aren’t well-evidenced, discipline specific theories or patterns. It just means there is no overarching set of reliable truths that can serve as the basis for predictable action in the future, or that can determine the success of a business overall — whether you're just starting out or growing a global enterprise.

Henri Poincaré put it best: “Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.” In business we may have an accumulation of facts, but there is no science.

Realizing this is liberating. It will stop you from falling into the trap of thinking that if you just have the right analysis, the right data, the right strategy, the right theory, or if you just read more books, or get more qualifications, success is guaranteed. 

It is not, it never will be. The only way to know for sure whether something will succeed is to try it and see what happens.

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