What Separates the Extremely Successful from the Pack?

All of the data presented here is consistent with the hypothesis of "pure dumb luck".

You would expect to see more answers like "My wife taught me everything I know about interpersonal skills" and "I never make an important business decision without consulting her" from the highly successful group, because they are the ones who make important business decisions and believe they have interpersonal skills. They get that exterior validation from their outward success. People who are only moderately successful presumably would be less comfortable crediting their mediocre success to their wife, so they answer with the little things that their wife does for them, like cleaning their shirt.

Similarly, the "propensity for creating value in non-obvious ways" may also reflect hindsight bias. People tend to get credited for their successes, and then rise to the level of the organization that their successes merit. Now imagine that two mid-level managers take identical risks, except that manager A's risk pans out and manager B's does not. Manager A will be thought of as a creative, original thinker and get promoted, but manager B will still be thought of in terms of his other successes, which were probably more ho-hum. If you look at the top executives, of course they're going to seem like they create value in creative, original ways, because that was how they got promoted in the first place.