Intelligent career success: The case of distinguished academics

The purpose of this qualitative study is to contribute to the scholarship on career success within a boundaryless career context. Within the body of boundaryless careers research, we adopt the intelligent career framework to highlight success factors described by twenty-eight distinguished academics (DAs) and eight of their spouses to illustrate the DAs' approach to extreme success in academia. Our results further support the existence of six unidirectional links as well as further links between the framework's three “ways of knowing” that have not been thoroughly examined in the career success literature. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for career scholars and practitioners.