What is the exact meaning of “It’s better to be lucky than good”? How popular is this adage?

Today’s (October 29) New York Times carries the article written by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen under the title “What’s luck go to do with it,” It deals with a nine-year research study of some of the most extreme business successes of modern times that they call "10Xers," that they recently completed.

The article begins with the following line.

“Better to be lucky than good, the adage goes. And maybe that’s true — if you just want to be merely good, not much better than average. But what if you want to build or do something great? And what if you want to do so in today’s unstable and unpredictable world?”

I guess “Better to be lucky than good “means “to be gifted with good fortune is better than being simply good (at what remains as a question though),” but I’m not sure of its exact meaning.

Although the authors say it’s an adage that I understand should be well-established, popular form of expression, I don’t find this phrase in neither Cambridge nor Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Google Ngram either doesn’t register this phrase.

As a plausible origin of this expression, flightjournal.com says:

“By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. "It's better to be lucky than good," says Lamar Gillett, the only P-35 pilot in. World War II to shoot down a Japanese Zero fighter. "I was lucky I was behind the Zero instead of in front of him. I was lucky when I landed back ...”

What is the exact meaning of "It's better to be lucky than good,"? What does "good" mean here? Is it really qualified as an adage as the authors claim it?

Solution 1:

Unlike most of the answerers so far, I have personally heard this phrase used many times in my life (although I have lived my whole life only 2 hours from NYC, so maybe it is a local thing). Anyway, the statement has always been used in my presence to mean 'skill can only get you so far' and follows the logic that you need a certain amount of luck to be REALLY successful.

A good place to look for this is pop music stars. From the perspective of technical skill/trained ability, many of them are amateurs at best, but they are still IMMENSELY popular. In many cases, their popularity is based mostly on looks and being in the right place at the right time. Meanwhile there are musicians who can perform the most difficult pieces ever written while wearing a blindfold, but no one will ever hear their names because they did not have the luck to be "discovered". It is better to be lucky than good.

Solution 2:

I read it as a shorter (but considerably less well-known and less eloquent) way of expressing the sentiment of Ecclesiastes 9:11 The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ... but time and chance happeneth to them all.

In both cases (depending on whether you're a glass half full or half empty type of person), you can interpret the "chance" element as referring to having good luck, or avoiding bad luck. A top international sportsman might need the former to become World Champion; a WW2 tail gunner needed the latter to stay alive.

As is so often the case with such dictums, there are others with pretty much the opposite meaning. I would contrast this one with Thomas Edison's Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.