One world that should be in capital letters at the top is hidden in the footnotes at the bottom, luck. A much simpler theory is, the difference between stubbornness and persistence is that losers are labeled as stubborn and winners are labeled as persistent, simply as a post-hoc rationalization based on outcome rather than any grandiose internal differences.

Fame plays also a big role in this, in that some people are simply rewarded by others for their stubbornness or even stupidity while most are not, the infamous "reality distortion field" effect when some people have amassed so much clout their mistakes don't even register and they can even bring stubbornly bad ideas into reality.