Lucky by Design: How to Navigate Hidden Markets

The Wharton School

Strategy and Innovation

About Programme

Why do some people land the best assignments, secure ideal work schedules, and gain access to busy leaders while others miss out? The answer lies not in luck, but in the hidden rules that determine who gets what in the presence of scarcity.

In this Wharton Online Authors Series course based on his book Lucky by Design, Wharton Professor Judd Kessler translates the science of market design into practical strategies for professional and everyday life. You will learn to recognize hidden markets, identify the rules shaping access, and choose the best strategies given those rules. You will then shift from participant to designer, evaluating how the systems you influence could become fairer, more efficient, easier to navigate, and better aligned with the market designer’s goals.

Programme Content

Self-paced and delivered entirely online, Lucky by Design: How to Navigate Hidden Markets is organized into two modules and a required culminating project. Short video lectures are paired with guiding questions, workbook-based analysis, required applied activities, challenges, and retrieval practice quizzes. The result is a guided diagnostic and redesign practicum, built for independent learning rather than passive viewing.

Module 1: Spotting the Rules of Hidden Markets Learn to see the hidden markets operating in professional and everyday life. You will identify the scarce resource, the people seeking access, and the rule that determines who gets what when price is not doing the deciding.

Module 2: Using and Improving the Rules of Hidden Markets Build judgment as both a participant and a designer. You will identify optimal strategies given the rule in use; evaluate outcomes using the criteria of equity, efficiency, and ease; predict how savvy participants may respond; and recommend practical changes that advance the market designer’s goals.

Your Hidden Market Playbook Complete the course by synthesizing your work into one practical artifact. Choose a Hidden Market Action Plan focused on a real system you participate in, influence, or control, or create a Hidden Market Design Toolkit that can be used repeatedly to diagnose and improve hidden markets in new contexts. Both options help you identify a hidden market, define what is not working, and recommend changes that improve fairness, efficiency, or ease.

Programme Audience

This course is designed for self-directed professionals who want to understand why scarce opportunities can feel random, burdensome, or unfair, and who want a practical framework for navigating or improving the systems around them. Ideal participants include:

Professionals seeking better strategies for accessing scarce assignments, roles, schedules, resources, or leadership attention

Managers and functional leaders who allocate limited time, budgets, projects, support, or access to decision makers

Rising leaders who want to improve how teams prioritize requests, assign work, manage bottlenecks, or distribute opportunities

Employees, managers, and entrepreneurs who participate in races, matching processes, two-sided markets, or other systems where price does not determine access

Readers of Lucky by Design who want to apply its ideas through structured practice and a usable final project

To further leverage the value and impact of this program, we encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to Wharton. We offer group-enrollment benefits to companies sending four or more participants.

Programme Benefits

Identify hidden markets by recognizing scarce resources, excess demand, and the non-price rules that determine access

Classify allocation rules, including first-come, first-served races, lines, and waiting lists; lotteries; two-sided markets; and centralized clearinghouses

Evaluate how well a hidden market performs using the criteria of equity, efficiency, and ease

Identify optimal participant strategies for the rules at play, such as preparing for a race, sending a credible signal, or reporting preferences truthfully

Recommend practical improvements that advance equity, efficiency, and ease while supporting the market designer’s goals

Anticipate how participants may respond to incentives, rule changes, and proposed redesigns

Create a Hidden Market Action Plan or Hidden Market Design Toolkit you can use after the course

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Prashansa Uttam

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The Wharton School

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