And some luck is genuine luck, such as when your main competitor is out flying a plane when VeryLargeCorp wants to buy the software that both of you produce, reducing your competitor to irrelevance, and giving you a huge boost.
While I recognize that networking is important in a business environment, I also noticed that much of it is not very distinguishable from the popularity contests of high school cliques. It is as if the world pg describes in "Why Nerds are Unpopular" continues in a far less dramatic fashion after high school: that we can escape much of the harshness, yet not all of it.