It seems to me the lesson is that you not only need to be smart, but you need to be willing to do the work to find opportunities, and willing to act upon them. Also, you need to have a little luck to be in the right place at the right time.

Not to beat a very bad fanboi cliche to death, but Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates. Steve saw an opportunity to sell a computer to the masses in the 70s and kick start the personal computer market. Bill saw an opportunity to tie his DOS to the IBM PC when he saw more business people wanted the PC over an Apple II. Steve saw the opportunity to create a graphical UI after visiting PARC and find a way to sell it, but wasn't nearly successful this time, because conditions were not in his favor (thanks to Bill Gates well timed opportunity). Bill then copied Steve's project and used his previous well timed success to do what Steve didn't quite have the leverage to do, get the GUI out to the masses.

Also look at Steve recognizing the market for ripping and mixing CDs, and the coming of the MP3, to create a music player at the right time that's easy to use, and to come up with a marketing plan that made everyone want it.

Both these men have skills and experience I'll never have. But they'd be nothing if the opportunity didn't arise. They'd be even less if the opportunity did arise, and no one took advantage of it. They'd just be here like the rest of us pontificating on how some other guy is a genius or not, struggling to install their copy of Ubuntu or something.

I guess my point is that this isn't something entirely new. This sounds like another book about the butterfly effect, so I'm not sure how useful it would be, though I'm sure its interesting entertainment.