The Drunkard's Walk [0], by Leonard Mlodinow, covers this and related topics brilliantly.
Relevant excerpt: "..economists like W. Brian Arthur argue that a concurrence of minor factors can even lead companies with no particular edge to come to dominate their competitors. "In the real world," he wrote, "if several similar-sized firms entered a market together, small fortuitous events - unexpected orders, chance meetings with buyers, managerial whims - would help determine which ones received early sales and, over time, which came to dominate. Economic activity is... [determined] by individual transactions that are too small to foresee, and these small 'random' events could [ac]cumulate and become magnified by positive feedbacks over time."