by Raffi Varoujian

Created on: September 08, 2010

The Author

Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist and writer who has worked for some of the biggest names in the American press - the Washington Post, the American Spectator, and most recently, the New Yorker. He was born in the UK, but grew up in Canada and has spent most of his professional life working in the USA. He has two other books - "Blink" (2005) and "The Tipping Point" (2000) - both of which were international bestsellers. "Outliers: The Story of Success" is his third book and was published in 2008.

The Theory

Gladwell's proposition is simple. He argues that the stereotypical tale of the working class man, who comes from nothing and builds an empire through sheer hard work and perseverance is a bit of a myth. If you scratch the surface of any successful person, you will find some common denominators that seem to apply in almost every case. Central to his theory is that ten thousand hours of practice in any field - be it playing the violin, programming computers, practicing a certain kind of law, or even being a rock star - goes a long way to making a person a master at their chosen profession. However, hard work by itself does not guarantee success - there has to be an opportunity, a lucky break - whether personally or in a wider social context, for the seed of hard work to germinate.

He focuses a great deal on the windows of opportunity that present themselves during the modern course of human history, and how certain people, because they had the breaks, were well poised to take advantage. He uses specific examples - such as the select group of computer enthusiasts that ended up founding some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley (such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bill Joy and Paul Allen) to back up his hypotheses and it's remarkable how consistently he seems to be right. Taking a contrarian view throughout, he challenges the lazily held presumptions that society seems to turn to when looking at people who have made it big and are deemed successful. He also argues that "genius" as we define it, is no guarantee of success either, using the example of Christopher Langan, who by all accounts, had the highest IQ ever recorded in modern times, but who, by our definition of success, was a bit of a loser.

Gladwell is essentially saying that success actually consists of hard work and expertise gained either through exceptional IQ or loads of practice, but that neither of these two elements is enough by itself. To understand why a person has succeeded,

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>