Outliers: The Story of Success
Just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers and it is by far one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read.
The book looks at how people are successful. The idea in our world is that success comes from hard work, being smarter than the other guy. But what Gladwell points out is that is not the end of the story. Sometimes, you can be those things and not be successful.
Gladwell looks at how to know whether your child will be a star hockey or soccer player based on what month they are born in. What the Beatls and Bill Gates have in common. Why Asians are so good at math. Why star New York lawyers have the same resume.
Outliers are those who have been given opportunities – and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them. For hockey and soccer players born in January, it’s a better shot at making the all-star team. For the Beatles, it was Hamburg. For Bill Gates, the lucky break was being born at the right time and getting the gift of a computer terminal in junior high. Joe Flom and the founders of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz got multiple breaks. They were born at the right time with the right parents and the right ethnicity, which allowed them to practice takeover law for twenty years before the rest of the legal world caught on.
This really was a fascinating read on why people are successful and why others are not. All successful people are not the same, sometimes you have to be born at the right time, in the right place, to the right family. But then, you have to do something with it.
