Outliers – the Story of Success
I’d heard of Outliers a few months back in some of my geek feed reading. I’m sure the portions of the book that were cited were the portions about Bill Gates and Bill Joy. At least that’s what I remembered when I saw the book last Sunday at Barnes and Nobel.
The introduction of Outliers starts off nicely with a “whodunnit” mystery surrounding low incidence of heart disease in the town of Roseto, PA, originally settled by immigrants from Roseto, Italy. Gladwell takes us through the background of the first settlers, their hometown in Italy, and their skills, etc. He rules out all of the easy theories and reveals the true reason that the Roseta residents are dieing later of old age instead of earlier of heart disease.
The following chapter introduces us to hockey, and the outstanding players of the game. As factors contributing to the success of hockey players are exposed, this reader assumed that success in this sport (and many others mentioned) was due to happenstance rather than hard work.
Chapter 2 started to whittle at away that this happenstance idea (at least for me). We learned the value of hard work (practice). Long, hard work is a prerequisite to take advantage of the opportunities that happenstance presents.
As the first part (Opportunity – Chapters 1..5) continues, Gladwell presents character after character with natural ability. Some of these characters are successful, and some aren’t. He does a tremendous amount of fact collection to present the theories of what makes each successful or not.
The second part (Legacy – Chapters 6..9) focuses on the parts of our heritage that give us special abilities (and faults). Particularly poignant is the description of southerners and their anger management. I’m still rolling Gladwell’s research around in my head to see if I agree with him. It’s easy to agree with the author when you’re not part of the demographic being described.
This book caused me to oscillate between chance and hard work as the primary vehicle for success. As I approached the end of the book, I realized they’re equal contributors, and that one can partially, but not totally, substitute for the other. I’m convinced that if I can internalize the information here, and get my kids to at least acknowledge some of the tenets, the Wilkins family might be able to increase it’s success rate over the next couple of generations
3.5 out of 5 stars.