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Where do you lie? Jul 14, 2009 (171 of 177 found this helpful)
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...
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4 stars for fun, but 2 stars for originality Nov 21, 2008 (518 of 609 found this helpful)
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
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A Lot Like Gladwell's Other Books Feb 12, 2009 (33 of 35 found this helpful)
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.
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What Makes Success? A Little Blt of a Lot of Things. (A teacher's review) Mar 20, 2009 (112 of 131 found this helpful)
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.
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Gladwellian Prose - Probing or Quoting? Nov 26, 2008 (56 of 69 found this helpful)
With effortless ease, Malcolm Gladwell once again proves he is a master of conceptualizing the abstract, simplifying the complex, and articulating the mundane. Blending together a rich tapestry of scientific literature, illustrative examples, anecdotal accounts, and intuitive observation, Gladwell poses his argument on how the outliers of society - those individual that are distinctly more successful than the norm - are more a result of their sociodemographics, family lineage, and societal evolutions than they are individual capabilities. In short, Gladwell states that pure genetic endowment or aptitude alone is not enough to predict our future, but that culture also plays an undeniable role in steering our course.
While not the most profound notion ever proffered, Gladwell does do an amazing job of attracting a readership to an interesting topic. He has a keen eye for questioning the status quo and helping us realize how much chance and environmental variation go into shaping icons, moguls, and geniuses. Simultaneously, he is a progenitor of ideas and an inventor of expressions. However, much of Malcom's intellectual opportunism relies heavily upon isolated research, broad generalizations, and a nonsensical number of "if, then" contingencies that nearly create a tautological story.
It may truly be that achieving eminence, in the sense of achieving supreme social status or creating a legacy, is the result of a unique set of circumstances that allow one to achieve their full potential. However, at the same time, it is also true that achieving such status is the result of a particular configuration of independent traits all of which have to be present or present in a certain degree to yield the result. Gladwell only manages to dance around both these ideas without producing any sound or substantial evidence as to what makes success, simply only chalking a major influence up to "culture" and "practice." Instead, he cites intelligent studies that are nearly 100 years old (e.g., Terman, 1920), highlights the failure of "one" intellectual genius named Chris Lagan while arbitrarily discussing the success of a wealthy physicist, provides untestable hypotheses about the role of culture in influencing behavior. Combine these disjointed statements together and ... presto, you have Gladwell's selective examples to form a somewhat coherent argument for his notion of the deterministic forces in our lives. It is almost a truism in any science that post hoc theorizing and single cases are an impossible basis for making any kind of argument about causation. Any one of Gladwell's "anecdotes" could be easily accounted for by another alternative explanation.
For instance, Gladwell asserts that a major reason for success is due to practice. He uses the example of Bill Gates, who, being born in 1955, was perfectly situated to embrace and practice the computer during his twenties. He also states, due to cultural differences, that Asian children are statistically better at math than American children due to a practice-orientated attitude. These are sound arguments. One of the main ingredients to learning is practice: this allows time to make errors and correct ourselves while converting learning from short-term memory to long-term memory. Practice also clarifies and strengthens the neural connections that are formed while we confront new and familiar material, thus allowing us to build deeper comprehension and cognitive schemas. Nevertheless, there is much more. Mastering materials requires the appropriate focus and attention of the individual. Bill Gates, Asian children, or any other "anecdote", must be able to remain vigilant and persistent in the material they are pursuing. If one is able to maintain greater attention, they may be able to extract more information at a single time. For example, if any student is to become better at math, they may simply need to place greater care and intention into their a