Background. The paper deals with understanding success in terms of generation value gap, transitivity and high social uncertainty as a component of self-determination of an individual acquires particular relevance, determining the vector of a person’s personal development.

The Objective of this research is to study the ideas of modern adolescents about success linked with self-esteem and assessment of their own success in significant spheres of life, i.e. education career and interpersonal relations. The study is based on the assumption that the notions of success as self-development will be associated with a higher level of self-esteem and assessment of success in adolescents.

Design. The study involved 500 adolescents (291 girls and 209 young men), students of the 10th and 11th grades of schools and gymnasiums (average age 16 years), Moscow, Russia. To study the ideas of adolescents about success, Adolescent Representations of Success (ARS) questionnaire was developed. To study the self-esteem of adolescents, the method of Dembo-Rubinstein was used in the modification A.M. Prihozhan, as well as a purposefully designed questionnaire to study indirect evaluation of success.

Results Three models of success that characterize the attitude of adolescents to the success are identified: success as social recognition, success as fulfillment of external social requirements, and success as self-development and self-actualization. The differences in the self-esteem of adolescents with different ideas about success are revealed.

Conclusion. The research confirmed the hypothesis and showed that varying perception of success in adolescents is closely related to self-esteem and evaluation of their own success. Understanding success as self-development and self-actualization is associated with a higher level of self-esteem and assessment of own success which promotes psychological well-being in general. Adolescents who share a model of success as fulfillment of external social requirements associate success with achieving goals with overcoming obstacles and satisfaction with results and place value on luck. For adolescents who are focused on the model of success as social recognition it is typical to place value on their personal authority among the peers, thus having high assessment rates of their success as a whole.

Background. Based on the analysis of literary plots and consulting practice the paper identifies the ways of overcoming the "problem of success" and innovative activity by managers and executives.

Objective. The hypothesis of the research can be presented in the following way: efficient innovative activity, overall effectiveness of the manager causes a contradictory attitude to the success achieved. Being aware that success is largely ensured by creating and implementing innovations, and sometimes being unaware of the commitment to avoid losing the goal, the manager falls into one of two ways. He/she either involuntarily seeks to keep the aim of the activity simultaneously with the desire to achieve it, or he/she is looking for opportunities to set new goals based on the one that has already been achieved or opposed to it. Since the goal of achieving greater efficiency is almost always associated with innovations, it is assumed that in the leader’s relation to innovations one can judge how the leader overcomes the "problem of success" and how much he/she is aware of it.

Research Progress. The total sample consisted of 115 participants (including 78 males, 37 females), middle-level managers, aged 32 to 51. 14 experts participated in the research. Based on expert interviews, the respondents were divided into two groups: more successful and more innovative managers were performed by 63 participants; less successful and less innovative managers were performed by 52 participants.

The research methods were the author's questionnaire and interview.

Research Results. Based on the difference analysis between the two groups of managers statistically significant answers differ in 79 per cent in the pairs of participants. 

Conclusion. The conclusion is based on the fact that for the leaders who are quite successful in innovative activity a characteristic feature of experiencing success and moving towards new goals was the way whose key features were depicted by E. Hemingway in his literary works. The practical significance of the research is that the revealed signs of the efficient experience of success can become a subject of special awareness for managers who are stuck on the problem of success in one of two scenarios poorly realized by the subject of management activity. 

The paper discusses various approaches to the definition of «success» and types of success. It also presents the results of the pilot study of success representations in modern adolescents: semantic universals are identified, the notion of «success» is defined, the most important characteristics of success in adolescents are highlighted. Using authorized techniques the “definition of success” highlights the notion of “success” to be the most consistent characteristic of “the achievement of goals”. One of the most significant characteristics is “self-realization”. Adolescents also define success as the experience of “joy and satisfaction from the work done” and as “a sense of welldeserved happiness”. It is of particular interest that such category as “popular in the society” is the least important in determining the success of a given sample. The most interesting part of the research is to analyze particular cases of success in famous personalities who are significant for adolescents, i.e. representatives of show business, modern business (e.g. Bill Gates), or members of the family and friends. The sphere of politics is less popular, and the sphere of science, art and sports are so rare for adolescent sources of success patterns.

The research is able to communicate ideas about the success of adolescents with the experience of meaningfulness of their lives. Those adolescents who evaluate their past, present and future life as meaningful and loose enough do not feel the strength to manage their own lives, regard themselves as not very successful people and the very success is seen as volatile and rare. The image of success in adolescents who consider their life meaningful are positive and bright: they do not consider it such a rare and changing phenomenon, probably because more than once they have experienced success in various areas of their lives.

As a result, a correlation representation of adolescents about the success with the experience of the meaningfulness of their lives is established.