Outliers: The Story of Success is a book by Malcolm Gladwell which I received as a Christmas present. I already read Gladwell’s The Tipping Point so I appreciated his writing style and focus on simplicity. The book is very approachable and written for a large adult audience. This helps with defusing the reader. This is important considering he is making the point that it is likely those people we admire that are considered geniuses, elite, etc. are likely incredibly lucky.

Gladwell has a knack for pointing out the obvious and putting a new spin on it. With outliers, the obvious point is that we rely on others for success. One of his many examples included Bill Gates who cofounded Microsoft. Many consider him some kind of genius but I know I’ve always remained skeptical. Gladwell pointed out something new to me in that Gates had access to one of the only time sharing computer systems at a time when very few others had that opportunity. Armed with 10,000 hours (a magic number that pops up repeatably in many contexts) of computing experience when the rest of the programmers in the world had maybe hundreds of hours sure gives you an edge. Add in a couple of other lucky breaks and we have a billionaire with incredible timing versus some kind of genius.

Outliers isn’t poking fun at the successful of the world or those that are smarter than the average bear. What Outliers is doing is pointing out that armed with some smarts, some great timing and a great cultural background and you have the recipe for success. Without all these things, the underdog really doesn’t have a fighting chance and it is very unlikely we will find many that are considered a “success” which have not had a lot of critical help along the way.

I think Gladwell’s point regarding culture being a larger influence on behaviour than most would admit is an interesting one. He asserts that cultural differences linger a lot longer and a lot deeper than might be obvious to many people and we should not dismiss culture so readily. This came as a surprise to me as well. I would never have thought the attitudes or our ancestors who immigrated to Canada would still have a large influence on my behaviour today but on reflection, he just might be on to something.

This book really does make you think which is always a good thing.