[It is reported that] Napoleon was asked whether he preferred courageous generals or brilliant generals. Neither, he replied; he preferred lucky generals.

So begins John Adams wonderful piece on risk and bad luck in the online British journal Spiked. It is worth a look.

Adams, a professor of Geography at University College London, goes on to assert that “[a]society that cannot accept the concept of luck is one that seeks to attach blame to every undesired outcome. Unless we can accept bad luck we are destined to be governed by a risk-blame-litigation-compensation culture that suffocates initiative….The whole world is now struggling to come to grips with this culture.” And so we are. In Defense of Bad Luck

Adams wrote a quite insightful piece on risk mangagement for the Adam Smith Institute in 1999. You can dowload the PDF at the link above.