Outlier means something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body. It also means a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample. In Outliers, author Malcon Gladwell uses the term outlier to mean a truly exceptional individual (or group) who, in his or her field of expertise, is so superior that he defines his own category of success. In this book, Gladwell examines the story of such outliers—people, teams, groups, and nations—to find out the reasons for their success. In the introduction he writes about the goal of his book:

In Outliers, I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanation of success don’t work. People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact 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. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from, that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.

Gladwell supports his theory with examples. He uses the stories of the Canadian Hockey team, Bill Joy (the legendary computer programmer and co-founder of Sun Microsystems), Bill Gates (another programming genius and co-founder of Microsoft), Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple), Robert Oppenheimer (theoretical physicist and scientific director of Manhattan project), Chris Langan (an autodidact whose had an IQ between 195 and 210, but failed to achieve success), Beetles (the famous rock band), children of East Asian countries (who excel in Maths), etc.

I each case Gladwell goes beyond the public story and find the reasons—date of birth, family background, cultural legacies, social environment, opportunities they got, etc.—to show that all of the extraordinary success stories have something more. They were possible because a lot of factors and people played their roles. According to the author “It is not the brightest who succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”

But Gladwell clarifies that even if the people were given the same opportunities, to become an outlier one has to be smart, intelligent and be willing to work really hard. In all the examples in the book, the outliers had practised their craft for more than 10,000 hours and honed their skills so that they could capitalize on the opportunities they got like no one else could.

This is a good book and presents some very interesting ideas about success. But the examples are mainly American. The book could have been more interesting, if the cases were from all over the world; there surely are many outliers in other parts of the world. Also in some of the cases the hypotheses are not backed by enough evidence or in some cases the whole case is not presented. For example, Gladwell tells the reasons for the superiority of East Asian children in Maths, but it is an accepted fact that Asian kids in general are good in Mathematics.

Another fact that I found interesting that Gladwell doesn’t try to find out whether there are any outliers who came up on their own—the typical self-made outliers. If he has tried, then he is not mentioning it in the book. We cannot say that a person achieved the phenomenal success by his or her own efforts; but the degree of external help the different outliers got will vary. But there is not a story about persons who became outliers with minimal outside help. So Galdwell falls short in researching the opposite side of his hypothesis and disproving it.

Even though there are some minor drawbacks, Outliers is a highly readable book and the theories put forwarded should be considered seriously. Galdwell has examined success and the reasons for it and found out why some people are more successful than other equally deserving ones. He offers solutions at the end of the book. In his own words:

“We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that 13-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that’s the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one 13-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? To build a better world we need to replace the patch work of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success—the fortunate birthdays and the happy accidents of history—with a society that provides opportunities for all. If Canada had a second hockey league for those children born in the last half of the year, it would today have twice as many adult hockey stars. Now multiply that sudden flowering of talent by every field and profession, The world could be so much richer than the world we have settled for.”

A very enjoyable book that conveys a very powerful message. A MUST read.

Book Details:

• Author: Malcom Gladwell
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Year: 2008
• ISBN: 9780316017923
• Cover & Page Count: Hardcover, 309 pages