Outliers: The Story of Success in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Nov 30, 2009 Jeff Scott rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, statistics, success, unorthodox-thinking

Great book on the nature of success. The analogies and stories here can make you more aware of how things come about. How do people become successful and how that doesn't necessarily relate to intelligence, but a combination of ability, opportunity, and background. The book confronts the idea that too often we assume that someone is successful because of simple ability and that no one helped them, they magically pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. For the most part that isn't true, and tha Great book on the nature of success. The analogies and stories here can make you more aware of how things come about. How do people become successful and how that doesn't necessarily relate to intelligence, but a combination of ability, opportunity, and background. The book confronts the idea that too often we assume that someone is successful because of simple ability and that no one helped them, they magically pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. For the most part that isn't true, and that from even before we are born, there are factors affecting our future.

Special note can be derived from successful hockey players, those born at the right time, so that their birthdays make them the older kids, allow them to perform better since they are older than the other kids, thus being selected for the elite hockey teams, providing them with more attention, making them better players. If this same opportunity is provided equally, will we have overall better players. Likewise, if we do this with intelligence, what disparities are occurring in our schools. The conclusion best sums it up. It is a great book to make one more alert about the world around is and the true nature of success.

"Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed. If it were, Christ Langan would be up there with Einstein. 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. 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 high school. Joe Flom and the founders of Wachtell, Lipton 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. And what Korean Air did, when it finally turned its operations around, was give its pilots the opportunity to escape the constraints of their cultural legacy.

The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the mouths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth...To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success...with a society that provides opportunities for all." p. 268, conclusion. ...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Heather rated it really liked it

Like all of Gladwell's books, I found this one to be interesting and a quick read. A lot of great anecdotes that were entertaining, a lot of interesting insights, and a few things I thought were interpreted from a very specific standpoint I didn't quite share. That being said, it's a good read and worth checking out. I'm sure the idea that great people aren't great all by themselves will rub a few people the wrong way, but I love the practice of respecting your origins, your surroundings, and th ...more

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Apr 20, 2010 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

What makes uber-successful people so successful? Why do some people rise to the top of their professions while others flounder? Gladwell’s suggestion in his newest, Outliers, is that natural talent only takes someone so far while the rest is up to a combination of luck and really really hard work. Gladwell argues that luck can include factors such as where and when you were born. In some cases, this includes the year you were born and in other cases even what month, as in the case of the Canadia ...more

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Oct 22, 2016 Chris Friend rated it liked it

An unsurprising premise—that successful people have that success primed through their environment—presented with interesting anecdotes that I fear lean too heavily on thinking that if a connection seems possible, it must exist. He's quick to say that one specific cultural difference leads to fundamental differences in cultural mindsets, though there's no reason to think he's actually identified the one real origin of the split.

Gladwell points to agrarian philosophies as not evidence but the cau ...more

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