On Arrogance and Success

Arrogance is the destroyer of all things creative, innovative, and good. It blinds us to both the mistakes we are making and the opportunities we are missing. This is by no means a new thought. The concept of hubris is older then most other parts of our culture. Why then, are arrogance and business success linked so strongly in our society?  When a CEO like Elon Musk goes off about how clearly superior he is, we all roll our eyes and phrases like "well you can't argue with success" get passed around. We all seem to have been conditioned somehow to accept that success and arrogance are linked.

I would like to propose an alternate theory: Arrogance is counterproductive to success and instead, we are victims of an optical illusion that makes the fictional link between the two seem intuitive.