Success Quote by An Wang

An Wang’s line is a quiet rebuke to the myth of the lone genius, delivered by someone who built a tech empire in an industry that loves to canonize “visionaries.” Coming from a businessman and inventor who navigated both engineering and boardrooms, it reads less like a motivational poster and more like a survival tip: the market rarely rewards brilliance that can’t ship, scale, sell, or sustain itself.

“Consistent common sense” is the phrase doing the heavy lifting. It smuggles in process: showing up, making sane trade-offs, hiring competently, watching cash flow, listening to customers, fixing what breaks. The subtext is that genius is intermittent and often self-indulgent; common sense, applied daily, is boring enough to be reliable. Wang isn’t denying the value of intelligence. He’s demoting inspiration from main character to supporting cast.

Context matters. Wang Laboratories rose in the mid-century boom of computing and office automation, when technical advantage could evaporate quickly and operational discipline separated durable companies from dazzling demos. In that world, “genius” can mean a breakthrough product; “success” means distribution, timing, pricing, service, and the unglamorous competence to keep a company coherent as it grows. The quote also carries an immigrant striver’s pragmatism: you may not control whether you’re labeled a genius, but you can control your habits.

It’s a statement designed to puncture Silicon Valley romanticism before Silicon Valley fully mythologized itself: the real flex is consistency.