Book Review: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

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Malcom Gladwell’s books have been of tremendous interest of me since the time I’ve started business school, but for some reason I never got around to reading them while I was in school. After getting through two of them, I think that Gladwell’s books should be on some sort of unofficial list of required reading for MBA students and marketers.

Outliers digs deep into the seeds of success by exploring some of the most successful people in our society. These include Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and even the Beatles.  He also explores Canadian all star hockey players. Gladwell pulls success stories from all walks of life and starts to explore what makes these people special. He starts by exploring the notion of unique advantages that enable people to be successful

• The majority of Canadian all-start players were all born in the 1st 4 months of the year, which makes the bigger than their classmates and as a result they are given opportunities that those born later in the year are not
• Bill Gates went to a special high school which had a computer center in the late 60’s when most Universities didn’t have computer centers
• Nearly ever Silicon Valley CEO was born in 1954-1955, which enabled them to be in college at a time when a technology revolution was starting
• The Beatles went to Hamburg, Germany for several years where they got tons of practice time by playing in strip clubs

One of the other things that he notes is the idea of 10,000 hours. Every single person who has perfected his or her art form (athletes, computer programmers, and musicians) each has managed to put in 10,000 hours of practice time.  This number has been one of the most notable patterns. However, each of the above people were also given unique opportunities to that allowed them to reach 10,000 hours of practice time.

In some ways Outliers might seem to make people feel that they haven’t been given these unique advantages and thus reaching for this massive success is a lost cause. But, I think if we look at the patterns that we can replicate (i.e. 10,000 hours of practice time), we can really use the principles of Outliers for our own success.  When I interviewed Peter Bregman, he mentioned Outliers to me, and mentioned that we practice what we are passionate about, and so 10,000 hours of doing something we love seems to me the key to becoming an Outlier. Outliers is definitely  a page turner, even though I listened to the audiobook. I definitely plan on purchasing a hard copy of the book.  Look next week for my review of the Tipping Point.

Tags: Outliers, Malcom Gladwell, Outliers Book Review, Success Principles

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