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“Outliers” By Malcolm Gladwell.
One of my favorite storytellers is Malcom Gladwell, the author of the seminal “Tipping Point,” “Blink,” and “Outliers.” Gladwell’s genius lies in his openness to new ideas, his persistent search for the meaning behind things, and his ability to synthesize complex ideas into a conversational narrative.
Most of us, who are familiar with the term "Outlier," know it from studying the bell curve in school, or from athletic competitions where the highest and the lowest score is tossed out.
Gladwell begins his book with two definitions of an outlier:
1. something that is situated away from or classed differently from a or related body,
2. a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample .
Gladwell then goes on to an intriguing analysis of outliers in general, and then deconstructs one kind of outlier: the exceptionally successful individual. Gladwell identifies what he believes are the environmental factors and individual attributes that contribute to, or work against, phenomenal success in seemingly equally talented individuals.
Within a few months of its publication, its hard to go anywhere in the business world without hearing references to Gladwell's book. The term "Outlier is being bandied about as a synonym for "Bill Gates-like" success by people who haven't read the book carefully or haven't read it at all.
Gladwell uses Gates' life to show that his success came from a confluence of environmental factors over which Gates had no direct control.
Some of these factors were:
- his birth year (1955), which made him just the right age to "capitalize" on the virtual revolution,
- being able to attend a private school which "happened to have" a timesharing terminal that allowed him to learn programming, and
- the city in which he lived, Seattle, where he was able to sneak into the University of Washington Computer lab between 3 and 6 in the morning, and as he put it "steal so much computer time." By the time Gates dropped out of Harvard after his sophmore year, he'd been doing computer programming for seven years!
Pick up a copy of "Outliers" and learn about the 10,000 hour rule, why no one makes it alone, and a persons birthday can play such a large role in your success or lack of success.
Copyright Bobbi McKenna 2009 All Rights Reserved
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