Born to win?
According to his own definition in his new book, New Yorker magazine writer Malcolm Gladwell is an ‘Outlier’—a remarkably exceptional individual whose accomplishments are so seminal that he or she re-defines the barometers of success in one’s own discipline. Gladwell’s first two books (The Tipping Point, Blink) sold millions of copies and made him a tidy fortune. Outliers, his third, promises to do the same, making him the envy of scribblers worldwide.
In Outliers, Gladwell presents a series of confounding, intellectual puzzles: Why are such a disproportionate number of Canada’s elite hockey players born in the first half of the year? Why are so many pioneers in the computer industry—Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and, of course, Bill Gates—born within just three years of each other? Why should working long, hard days in a rice paddy be an automatic qualifier for success in Math?
 Price: Rs 399 Pages: 309 |
I won’t ruin it all for you but here’s one case that Gladwell dissects to explain stratospheric success: The Beatles. John, Paul, George and Pete Best (pre-Ringo days, remember?) might have been talented and smart musicians, but what made a difference in their lives, Gladwell says, was their “Hamburg days”. In the early ’60s, Hamburg had an abundance of strip clubs, and a man named Bruno decided to import bands from Liverpool to play non-stop music for patrons. The Beatles ended up playing a staggering eight hours a day, seven nights a week over five trips to the city—a mind-boggling total of 1,200 times. This transformed them into an infinitely tighter and more versatile band and redefined rock ’n’ roll forever.
Gladwell pegs the success of ‘Outliers’ like the Beatles or Gates to factors much less sexy than just innate talent or cerebral horsepower. Instead, the winning formulas depend on some combination of good timing, persistence and cultural background. “People don’t rise from nothing,” writes Gladwell. “They are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot,” he says.
Gladwell’s book has a few holes. It’s quite selective—what happened to all the other Liverpool bands doing the same thing in Hamburg?—and his arguments contain little statistical rigour. Also, someone not in the middle-to-upper middle classes of society has little chance at being an ‘Outlier’ according to Gladwell—a dangerously fatalistic argument. Plus, luck—he calls it opportunity— matters more than innate talent. What would Gladwell make of Srinivasa Ramanujan who only encountered formal math at age ten, mastered advanced trigonometry at age thirteen and went on to become one of the all-time greats? Ramanujan wasn’t well-off—his father was a clerk in a sari shop—nor did his family slave away in a paddy field.
Still, Outliers is a must read, for Gladwell is a consummate raconteur. If you enjoyed Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics, you will love this book.
Edited by Dilek Cetindamar
Jaico Publishing House, 2008
Rs 495
A handy guide to the world of Venture Capital. Industry experts weigh in on modes of financing, exit options and policy frameworks, amongst other things. Also included are country-specific case studies.
Author: Fons Trompenaars
Research Press, 2007
Rs 495
The author draws on a massive database containing cases from over 100 countries, as well as comic sketches from shows like Fawlty Towers, to provide a blueprint for corporate creativity.
