Outliers – The Story of Success

This is Malcolm Gladwell’s new book after his immense hits ‘The Tipping Pont’ and ‘Blink’. Both books were a joy to read. For a non-fiction what you look for is insight, and both books provide plenty. I must say I was a bit skeptical before opening his latest work. Can someone really keep pounding out great ideas? That’s three in a row in less than 10 year. For the first fifty pages I even thought I was right – They are all banal observations which border on common senses. After I finished the last page, however, I had to admit this guy is a real genius. He can pull many small seemingly unrelated anecdotes together and verge onto a very convincing conclusion. The fact that he is a good story teller makes the whole book journey really enjoyable.

In typical Gladwell style, the book starts with some interesting statistics about successful baseball players in Canada. It is trying to identify patterns associated with outliers – individuals or groups who stand out from the main stream. The first attribute is opportunity. One has to be given opportunity to succeed. In the case of junior baseball players in Canada, some of them were not given an equal opportunity because of their birthday. (I do not want to spoil your reading interest. You have to find out exactly what happen in the book.)

Chapter 2 and 5 are the ‘banal’ stuff which every curious person should have noticed in the real world. What Gladwell does is to use more examples to illustrate the point that both ‘luck’ and ‘hard work’ plays an important part in a person’s success. They are not very convincing. Nevertheless they form part of the entire thesis Gladwell is trying to build up. The discussions in Chapter 3 and 4 about studies of geniuses are interesting. Most people would probably bask in a sense of ‘justice’ when they finally learn that high IQ does not necessarily lead to a brilliant career or a life of achievement. In fact according to the study Gladwell quotes; your IQ is only one half of the equation. The other half is your family background and whatever that comes with it. Up to this moment the book can keep my interest but the insights I have been expecting from a Gladwell’s book are still missing.

Part 2 of the book makes the read all worthwhile. All chapters focus on the effect of culture, that is, the society where one grew up, on one’s behavior or even capability. As a person coming from the Delta Pearl River region, I’d gladly accept that Rice Paddies where my ancestors come from do improve my mathematical ability. Such is the talent of Gladwell. He is a journalist by training. But his observations and researches and subsequent formulation into some theories make you think. His theories may not be entirely true, and they are not established and verified by commonly accepted research methodology. Nevertheless they are convincing enough to the extent that even government administrators would have an urge to apply them immediately. In Part 2 it’s the KIPP program that is enticing. It’s basically a reinforcement of his theories that hard work is an important element of building up one’s mathematical capability. A person with a more disciplined lifestyle and academic achievement, especially in mathematics, has a better chance of going to college and improve his or her life. If anything, this is common belief all across Asia. The genius of Gladwell is he seems to have ‘proved’ it.

The entire book focuses on disapproving the commonly accepted concept that success in life comes from individual talents and efforts. Gladwell methodically demonstrates evidences including stories of individuals, research papers, and even his own life events to argue that success comes from a few common elements – opportunity given, culture, environment, hard work and talent. Just like the old saying goes, ‘Right time, right place, and right person’. This is reminiscent of what my parents used to tell me: Success only has two components – luck and hard work.