A common definition is that bad luck is an unfortunate, unpredictable outcome. This is a made-up definition that attempts to make the person receiving bad luck into a blameless victim. It is an excuse for the inability to perceive intentions that are obvious to almost every onlooker.
If you ask almost any observer of a person who has bad luck, you will find that they were predicting his failures long before they happened, because the person who has “bad luck” has ignored the intentions of others and their own lack of information on what to do in order to succeed.
The major reason for failure in life is the inability to perceive intentions and the unwillingness to assess their importance. Everything in the material universe has been created by intentions and every action has an intention driving it. Intention is a spiritual quality and cannot be directly measured by science. The best measure of an intention, if you cannot perceive it directly, is by the results.
When something you desire and work for diligently is not happening, this is not bad luck. There is counter-intention at work or you have failed to understand what is required to succeed. Your project may be the greatest advance ever to happen to modern civilization, but if the majority of prospective customers feel it is evil or unnecessary, your project will not succeed, no matter how much you advertise it.
On the other hand, you may have sold prospective customers on the desirability of your idea, but the project consumes more energy and money than it can ever generate and it harms the environment. In this case, your project will get built and people will cheer, but the damage will show up later and your reputation will be permanently harmed. In this case, the true cost of the project was never seen or was ignored in the push to get the project completed as planned.
In both of these cases, there are people able to see the counter-intentions and the lack of actual justification for the project, but they either did not speak up or were ignored by those in charge. The sinking of the Titanic was not bad luck and neither is the current economic crises in our current civilizations. The prevalence of misinformation in our school systems and in most of our media will almost guarantee that “bad luck” will continue to occur until some changes are made.