Gruber is perceptive and incisive, but post hoc analyses are dime a dozen. Show me a writer who predicts successes and failures of start ups and ventures at even 60% rate with explanation of why they will, and I'll be at awe.
> An impressive series of studies by Thomas Åstebro sheds light on what happens when optimists receive bad news. He drew his data from a Canadian organization—the Inventor’s Assistance Program—which collects a small fee to provide inventors with an objective assessment of the commercial prospects of their idea. The evaluations rely on careful ratings of each invention on 37 criteria, including need for the product, cost of production, and estimated trend of demand. The analysts summarize their ratings by a letter grade, where D and E predict failure—a prediction made for over 70% of the inventions they review. The forecasts of failure are remarkably accurate: only 5 of 411 projects that were given the lowest grade reached commercialization, and none was successful.
- Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
The full data table is available here: http://www.fptt-pftt.gc.ca/pdf/Astebro_Gerchak.pdf (page 36)