Hi,
I think you are right.. and wrong.
I think you are right when you say that working harder won't do. That's what your boss wants you to believe, but indeed, I think it is a lie. Just because working hard is never as rewarded as it should be. Because we are living in world in which being young and beautiful is much more important than being smart!
I also think you are wrong when you talk about luck. Because your boss (and those of very large companies) are perfectly aware that they are in such position thanks to their luck. So they tend to close their network, to make golden paths that lead to domination... and are completely unaccessible for anyone out of their private "leading sphere".
Frankly, I don't see where I'm wrong here when I mention luck and that you should not only take it into account as a possibility and be prepared to take advantage of it when it pops up, but in fact act toward increasing your chances of encountering it. If you mean that your boss is somehow depriving you of any chance of meeting luck in your life, I think this is simply impossible because it goes against the nature of luck. In other words, luck is something which is not supposed to happen but which happens, and whatever you or they do to close the doors to it, luck will overcome all the roadblocks in the end because it is in its very nature.