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In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”–the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their … More >>
The main tenet of Outliers is that there is a logic behind why some people become successful, and it has more to do with legacy and opportunity than high IQ. In his latest book, New Yorker contributor Gladwell casts his inquisitive eye on those who have risen meteorically to the top of their fields, analyzing developmental patterns and searching for a common thread. The author asserts that there is no such thing as a self-made man, that “the true origins of high achievement” lie instead in the circumstances and influences of one’s upbringing, combined with excellent timing. The Beatles had Hamburg in 1960-62; Bill Gates had access to an ASR-33 Teletype in 1968. Both put in thousands of hours-Gladwell posits that 10,000 is the magic number-on their craft at a young age, resulting in an above-average head start.
Gladwell makes sure to note that to begin with, these individuals possessed once-in-a-generation talent in their fields. He simply makes the point that both encountered the kind of “right place at the right time” opportunity that allowed them to capitalize on their talent, a delineation that often separates moderate from extraordinary success. This is also why Asians excel at mathematics-their culture demands it. If other countries schooled their children as rigorously, the author argues, scores would even out.
Gladwell also looks at “demographic luck,” the effect of one’s birth date. He demonstrates how being born in the decades of the 1830s or 1930s proved an enormous advantage for any future entrepreneur, as both saw economic booms and demographic troughs, meaning that class sizes were small, teachers were overqualified, universities were looking to enroll and companies were looking for employees.
In short, possibility comes “from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with.” This theme appears throughout the varied anecdotes, but is it groundbreaking information? At times it seems an exercise in repackaged carpe diem, especially from a mind as attuned as Gladwell’s. Nonetheless, the author’s lively storytelling and infectious enthusiasm make it an engaging, perhaps even inspiring, read.
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is another of my favorites in this genre. I recommend it strongly because, unlike Gladwell’s book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 shows you how to become an outlier…
Rating: 5 / 5
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell seeks to disabuse us of the notion that genius and greatness are predominantly a function of innate ability and IQ. He rightly notes that while IQ is certainly a contributor, it reaches a “point of diminishing returns” after a while: once people score about 130, IQ becomes less important and “intangibles” (my term) become more important.
The book, then, focuses on what these “intangibles” are. Gladwell suggests that things like what income level, culture, and time of a child’s birth are important contributors to success, as well as a person’s tenacity and agility. As the last of these is the least conventional, think of it this way: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and many other computer masterminds would likely not have distinguiished themselves were they born 10 years earlier (as they would not have been exposed to computers in high-school/college, and would have been in their mid-thirties by the time computers really took hold, likely already in other careers by that point in their lives.)
How does culture matter? Think about the discrepancy between how many days per year American children spend in school (180) versus Asian students (280), and how many more social expectaitons Asian students are borne into? Certianly this will affect academic and other achievement.
Now, I should point out that Gladwell is quite adept at anecdotal story telling and is much less adept at statistical analysis. As such, he could be justly accused of overstating his case (and maybe even finding patterns where he wants to see them, rather than where they exist.) Gladwell is definitely writing for the popular market so anyone wanting good “back up” of his arguments may find themselves disappointed by his cherry-picking of examples.
That said, Gladwell’s book contains some interesting and provocative ideas, especially for educators and those concerned with education. His last chapter – about the KIPP schools – is a fascinating plea for American schools to infuse more rigor (and quantity) to the educational school year. As a main part of Gladwell’s thesis is that how hard one works (and is willing to work) is endemic to one’s likelihood of success, we set students up for failure by not expecting them to work as hard as other countries expect of their students.
For a fun read which introduces some interesting ideas, Gladwell’s “Outliers” is a decent book. Those who want a little more scholarly meat may come away disappointed.
Rating: 4 / 5
Gladwell has done it again…sort of. I would have categorized this book as a 4 or 5 star read like his previous two installments–Blink and The Tipping Point, except he lost a few originality points this time around.
Gladwell’s knack for making a reader say “huh, interesting…” is something for other writers to marvel at. I’m convinced that he could pen a book called “Green: It’s the color of grass,” and he would write it in such a way that would inspire most of us to say “huh…who knew?!?”
But in the case of Outliers the “huh…” factor has little to do with the ideas found in the book, and are almost exclusively the result of Gladwell’s keen sense of how to make the ordinary and mundane sound exciting and new. This is especially true in the two chapters devoted to debunking the myth that intelligence is the key to success. Unfortunately, Dan Goleman beat him to the punch way back in 1995 with his book “Emotional Intelligence: Why it matters more than IQ.” With a quick sleight of hand, Gladwell cites Robert Sternberg’s label of “practical intelligence,” instead of calling it emotional intelligence. But let’s be honest, here, the only difference is Goleman says “tem-ay-toe,” and Gladwell says “tem-ah-toe.”
The other flaw is that nothing in it is terribly useful for practical application. It’s no secret to anyone in the business of hiring that most selection techniques are abysmal predictors of on-the-job success. What we are left with as a takeaway from Outliers is that factors of chance like the ability to practice a skill for 10,000 hours–mostly during childhood–is the key to predicting future success. Get your kids started today…as long as you know when the next Industrial Revolution or Internet Age is going to occur. Aside from emotional intelligence (aka “practical intelligence”) most of these are factors that we just can’t do much about. Unfortunately, we already knew that.
Alas, however, Malcolm Gladwell is a professional writer, and not a professional researcher. If readers keep that in mind, they won’t be too disappointed by the methods or originality of the research. His job is to weave together an interesting story, which is something Gladwell does exceedingly well. If all you want is some good entertainment and fodder for cocktail party discussions, Outliers might make a nice addition to your bookshelves.
Nick Tasler is the author of The Impulse Factor: Why Some of Us Play It Safe and Others Risk It All
Rating: 3 / 5
Gladwell seems to have perfected a formula:
1. Latch onto a catchy concept.
2. Think of a great, catchy one- or two-word title.
3. Write a thin, small book.
4. Start your book with a decent analysis of some facts that support your catchy thesis, hook the reader, then let the book slide into a series of anecdotes and stories. Don’t “prove” your thesis, just illustrate it.
5. Charge a lot for it (in both absolute dollars and cost-per-word).
6. Get a terrific, minimalist cover design.
7. Let the royalties and accolades roll in.
Each of Gladwell’s three books (“Tipping Point,” “Blink,” and “Outliers”) follows this formula. It’s a proven winner, and at the end of this book, he goes into full rooting mode for another hit in his Acknowledgements: “[A colleague] and I have been two for two so far, and…here’s hoping we go three for three.” Wow. Let’s just set up a toll-booth.
I don’t agree with the five-star reviews. The book is just too thin, anecdotal, and un-analytical to be taken very seriously. On the cover flap, it says that “Tipping Point” changed the way we understand the world, “Blink” changed the way we think about thinking, and “Outliers” will transform the way we understand success. Uh, no. They are all decent books with provocative theses, but none has enough “there” there to change the way most people think about anything.
I also don’t agree with the one-star reviews. Gladwell’s topics are provocative, his books are easy reads (this one took me just a few hours on vacation, and I’m not that fast a reader), and the stories and anecdotes are interesting. I found myself pretty convinced that birthdates are important to hockey success (so he hooked me with the first part of the book), but each successive chapter became less fact-based and more story-based. That said, it’s a nice easy read, and I learned a thing or two. His books are not worthless.
So I give it a nice easy 88-mph down the middle three stars. I must admit, I admire the success he has had with his formula. He makes it look pretty easy.
Rating: 3 / 5
I purchased this book thinking that it would be as well-researched and written as his previous two works, “The Tipping Point” and “Blink.” Less than a third of a way through the book, however, I began to become concerned that Gladwell’s enthusiasm for his topic had blurred his view of important related factors.
As a statistician, I was troubled by his apparent lack of understanding of the concept of “range restriction” in correlational research. He notes that IQ and success appear to be fairly well correlated up to an IQ of 120 or so, and that beyond this level there is very little relationship between IQ and success. Only 10% of the population has an IQ above 120, meaning that very few fall into this classification. Past an IQ of 132, less than 2% of the population is found.
It is clear that one cannot correlate a constant with a variable, since the constant does not change no matter what the value of the variable. Narrowing down the IQ scale to only persons above 120 makes the IQ scale close to a constant.
To provide an analogy, consider the correlation between height and basketball ability. Up to a height of about six feet two inches, there is a very high correlation between height and basketball ability. Above that height, however, other factors become more important than height. Agility, good ball-handling skills, eye-hand coordination, etc., all trump height as important facets of a good basketball player among the tallest 10% of the population. A clumsy seven-footer will never be able to compete with a skilled six-foot-two player.
All of this does not prove that height is unimportant in basketball (even among the top 10% of the population in height), but just that by restricting the range of basketball players to those over six-foot-two essentially guarantees that the correlation of height with basketball skill will be low.
Another sloppy statement in the book indicates that the 1918 flu pandemic was followed by “the First World War, then the Depression, then the Second World War,” where clearly the First World War preceded the flu pandemic.
Although there is much about the book that is interesting, these two missteps alone reveal a lack of attention to detail that leads one to wonder how valid the rest of the book is. I sincerely hope that Gladwell’s next book will be more along the lines of “The Tipping Point” and “Blink.”
Rating: 1 / 5
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