Enticed by the buzz, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. In this short book, Gladwell gives his perspective on several events that are significantly outside the norm. He moves from hockey stars to billionaires to pilots to math students. Using these examples, he asserts that most people overlook the fortuitous timing and hard work that underlies the exceptional results.
On it’s own, this thesis isn’t new or exciting. I know several wildly successful people who needed both good timing and hard work to make their fortunes. And whether they made their millions on the internet, at the poker table, or on Wall Street, those people will happily admit that they needed luck and hard work. Come to think of it, I don’t know anybody (successful or not) who doesn’t recognize the need to combine good timing with hard work in order to succeed. In that sense, I don’t know who Gladwell is targeting.
That said, I did enjoy the book because I learned something. Gladwell supported his argument with facts that were new to me. I didn’t know most hockey players are born in the first few months of the year. I didn’t know about the cultural conventions between a Korean Captain and First Officer. I enjoyed reading statistics on the disparate effect summer vacation has on rich and poor grade school students. What’s better, Gladwell does a good job of linking all of his examples together. The story flows.
I think Gladwell’s argument works best in the broad cases of hockey players or math students. It’s overly simplistic when applied to successful individuals like Bill Joy. Sure, Bill Joy was born at the right time and worked tirelessly. If he were born a few years earlier or later, he certainly wouldn’t have achieved the same success. Even so, Bill Joy is a special genius. When you hear him talk or see his work, you know there’s no way to hold him back. He possesses a special mind perfectly tuned for his time and place in history. I wish Gladwell gave such special individual talent more credance.
