Fate, Luck and Choice

Fate, Luck and Choice is a business and strategy podcast produced through the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), co-hosted by Professor Nick Binedell and Professor Adrian Saville.

Each episode uses a simple, disciplined lens: fate (the starting conditions and history a business, economy, or country inherits), luck (external events nobody can control), and choice (the strategic decisions leaders actually make). Applied consistently, that lens becomes a serious way to read business performance, economic cycles, the rise and fall of global empires, and South Africa’s own prospects.

Nick Binedell is the strategy professor and founding director of GIBS whose 6Cs of strategic performance sit at the heart of the IDS Convergence Model, the framework behind every engagement we run. Adrian Saville is a professor of economics, finance and strategy at GIBS, known for bringing long-run historical thinking to markets and policy.

We feature Fate, Luck and Choice in our Thought Leadership section because it does publicly what we do privately with our clients: separate what a leader inherited, what they could not control, and what they actually chose, then hold them to account for that choice. It is the same discipline behind the IDS Apex Leadership Experience and the Convergence Model, applied to the biggest stage there is.

We’ll add new episodes here as they are released, alongside our written and audio thought leadership.