i believe that the most important things to success are : confidence , persistence and to be positive all the time talent and hard work are important too , but if you have them both without feeling confident nor president you can't encounter any obstacles and would give up easily . and you need to be positive about every experience you face , so you can move on in your life .

Another factor that’s often ignored in such discussions is Passion. Passion makes us strive for excellence. Talent + hard work + passion is a winning formula for success

If you don't have the talent, you can work as hard as you like and you won't succeed. To make my point: It took Japan about 5 years to change from a poor country into a fully functioning developed economy. Now how long has Russia been trying? How long has China been trying? Get my point?

A mixture of both. ^^

Hard-work I agree that talent can be very important in some areas which require creativity, such as artistic areas. But, generally speaking, hard-working is more effective. Lots of people can compensate the lack of talent with hard-working. On the other hand, talent itself, is not adequate for success. I can give you lots of examples, who are talented but not hard-working and eventually they became unsuccessful. Consider the business life as a marathon. A talented person may start the race a few steps forward than his competitors. However it is hard work, which determines our speed. Hard-work is more important in the long run.