Outliers
Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't
By: Malcolm Gladwell
Published: Nov 1, 2008
ISBN: 9780316017923
Format: Hardcover, 304pp
Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Our notion that it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic, writes visionary author Malcolm Gladwell in his watershed book Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't. The author provides a devastating rebuttal to the idea of why people succeed or fail, and why we need to rethink conventional wisdom on everything from what constitutes genius, to the causes of unusual events.
Malcolm Gladwell begins his book with the seemingly innocent observation that elite level hockey players share similar birth dates, clustered in the first three months of the year. With this data in hand, the author discovers a pattern that has gone unnoticed by others. While coaches, selecting eight and ten year old hockey players believed they were selecting talent objectively, their selection bias favored older and bigger players. As a result of their being chosen, the players received better coaching and more playing time. By they time they reached adulthood, as a result of this self fulfilling prophecy, the players were better than their slightly younger cohorts.
Malcolm Gladwell (photo left) continues his assault on what people believe causes success as he delves more deeply into his research. By extending the analysis of the hockey players' additional playing time to other fields, including the careers of The Beatles and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, the commonality is that essential and exceptional preparation time. For Gladwell, the threshold preparation time for exceptional performance is ten thousand hours. Through additional empirical data gleaned from observation, that ten thousand hour development period holds true for every walk of life. Carrying the discussion further, a person's entire social, economic, and demographic profile also play huge roles in the success or failure of an individual.
For me, the power of the book is the observation of the crucial patterns at work at both the individual and societal level. By uncovering similarities, through commonalities shared by successful people and those of less successful individuals, the entire paradigm of what constitutes genius an failure is turned upside down. Malcolm Gladwell opens himself to the charge of presenting common sense as theory. That charge is weak, as his common pattern analysis is based on objective data, historical study, cultural differences, and sociological studies.
The all important pattern of success theory invites widespread application as it creates opportunities for achievement and success. The previous theory, that genius and success were random and inexplicable, is no longer valid. Students who lack the glaring advantage of Bill Gates receiving a computer and terminal time as a teenager no longer need be condemned to failure. Through understanding the power of the requisite preparation time, a head start can be multiplied to students across all of society. In that sense, this is a very optimistic book, as it offers a series of blueprints for developing and multiplying success.
I highly recommend the landmark Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't by Malcolm Gladwell, to anyone serious about discovering the conditions that predispose a person to success, and how to duplicate those circumstances for individuals who lack those same benefits. As a mandate for rebuilding Western society through raising and expanding levels of achievement, this destined to be classic book is an indispensable power tool.
Read Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't by Malcolm Gladwell, and you will never look at genius or successful people in the same way again. Instead, you will want to examine the special circumstances that led to their exceptional lives more closely. Outliers are not all they may appear to be at first glance.
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