Outliers, the story of success

Outliers is too much focused on the American situation. The book would gain strength if international examples were used. However, the book can also be the viewed as result of therapy by Malcolm Gladwell, in order to gain insight in his own outliers status. It was a fun book to read, but I didn't gain any big insights. On occasion, you may rethink your current understanding of teams, collaboration and culture. But, no tips or tricks or lessons learned were provided. Skeptically speaking, this book contains a lot of common sense, wrapped in beautiful anecdotes, which fit well with the convictions the reader already has. This probably one of the reasons of the success of this book.

In his third book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on a journey in the world of success stories. We learn why people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs , Robert Oppenheimer and Bill Joy could succeed. We also learn why a genius like Chris Langdan (IQ estimated between 190 en 210) did not and still leads an average live. In a nutshell, its a story about the right man, in the right place on the right time (opportunity) combined with nurture and nature (legacy).

The book consists of two parts. Part 1 is called opportunity. The subtitle of this part could have been chance favors the prepared mind (quote by Louis Pasteur). The reader gets (re)acquainted with the 10.000 hours rule. Whatever the profession your in, in order to become a master, you have to put in this many hours, given the fact that you have the talent in the first place.

Part 2 is about the legacy of culture. Why are Americans born in the South more aggressive in nature, then their fellow Americans from the North? Gladwell described the cult of 'blood vengeance' which was imported from Great Britain, where all immigrant came from. Funny experiments to proof these differences are described. Do stress levels rise if you get insulted? In Northerners nothing happens, they shrug and laugh it off. Southerns, however, explode. The explanation of these differences is in accordance with the book Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer, which deals with evolutionary economics (the Austrian School).

An outlier is by definition an extreme. This is the description commonly used in statistics. Gladwell used a broader interpretation of the term and views it as exceptional people. People love to read stories of success. This is why self help book are so popular. But, it is the wrong assumption to think you can create your own success, just by working hard. You need a lot more then that. This is the first lesson Malcolm Gladwell teaches us.

The book starts out with the Roseta mystery. In short, this is a little Italian community in Pennsylvania. It is depicted as a closed community, which adhered to all the traditions from the old land (Italy). The physician Stewart Wolf travels trough town to give a lecture for the local medical society. One of the doctors tells him over a beer, that there almost no people with heart disease under 65 years. This comes as a shock and Wolf starts an exhaustive investigation. Eventually he learns that you have to look behind the individual characterics and also take culture and community into account.

Medical science was skeptical, but accepts his analysis. Gladwell uses this story as an analogy to convey the story of success. The reader finds out about the success of the Beatles, the internet billionaires of Silicon Valley (Gates, Jobs, Joy), the anomaly in the birth dates of Canadian hockey players, the 10.000 hours rule, misconceptions about geniuses and the origin of behavior and culture. All stories deal with exceptional people with extraordinary achievements. However, their successes would not have been possible if they didn't get a chance in one way or another..