Customer Reviews
There is a tide in the affairs of men - By: Dr. Nicholas P. G. Davies, 06 Jan 2009 
"There is a tidein the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is boundin shallows &in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."
Brutus (from Julius Caesar)captures the essence of this book. It's an entertaining read with good stories & examples. Its basic message is easy to summarise.
Success is not a linear journey. And there are always particular local factors that enable it. No one is really self made. Success is about preparation & opportunity coming together. All successful people have had some "lucky breaks" although I think it was a great golfer who said, "The more I practice the luckier I seem to become."
The administrative & technical quirks (such as where you arein your school year) that have such a huge effects on your academic & sporting achievements, & future prospects are well described. The small starting differences that lead to massive differential reinforcement effects are well described.
And the combination of a skill & a brand new field opening up is unbeatable for major success as Bill Gates & Bill Joy demonstrate.
This book is not the last word on success but it gives many useful pointers, & may help you realise where some of your opportunities are, & also where they won't be found no matter how good you are at something.
It's a great quick read & you will learn some useful ideas from it.
How to "unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't" - By: Robert Morris, 06 Jan 2009 In reviews of Malcolm Gladwell's previous books, The Tipping Point & Blink, I express an opinion that Gladwell offers an insight that others have previously expressed & then requires 300+ pages to discuss it. His key pointsin both books could have been madein an article. Gladwell's "tipping point"(2002), for example, is essentially the same as Michael Kami's "trigger point" (1988) & Andrew Gove "inflection point" (1996). (Gladwell does acknowledge the importance of an article, "Broken Windows," co-authored by James Wilson & George Kelling for The Atlantic Monthlyin 1982). When I began to read Outliers, therefore, I feared that Gladwell would once again offer a thoughtful but verbose examination of a by-now familiar insight: success requires more than extraordinary talent.
That said, Outliers is (in my opinion) his most significant & most valuable book thus far. As the Epilogue clearly indicates, this is also his most personal book. In it, Gladwell demonstrates superior storyteller skills as he discusses several quite different situations that demonstrate that "the values of the world we inhabit & the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are...[Those who succeed] owe something to parentage & patronage. [They] may look like they did all by themselves. Butin fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages & extraordinary opportunities & cultural legacies that allow them to learn & work hard & make sense of the worldin ways others cannot...It's not enough to ask what successful people are like,in other words. It is only by asking where they are [begin italics] from [end italics] that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds & who doesn't."
Gladwell provides many different versions of "the story of success" involving those who demonstrate what sociologists call "accumulative advantage." For example,in any youth sports competition (especially hockey) that groups players according to the calendar year of birth, those who are bornin January, February, or March are more likely to be bigger, better coordinated, & more talented because of "the phenomenon of relative age." They will play more often, receive more individual attention, & be selected to play on better teams because they were born closest to the cut-off date. Their success follows a predictable course. "Outliers are those who have been given opportunities - & who have had the strength & presence of mind to seize them." Clearly, Gladwell agrees with Geoff Colvin that "talent is overrated." As does Colvin, he cites The 10,000-Hour Rule & suggests that "once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, [begin italics] much [end italics] harder."
John Maxwell makes the same pointin Talent Is Never Enough. If it were, "then the most effective & influential people would always be the most talented ones but that is often not the case...Clearly talent isn't everything." That said, he hastens to add, talent is worthy of our admiration & must be perceivedin the proper perspective. Maxwell's key point is that all of us have a choice, actually several choices, & can determine to what extent (if any) we take full advantage of the talents we have, such as they are. "If you do, you will add value to yourself, add value to others, & accomplish much more than you dreamed was possible." Gladwell agrees but would presumably stress, also, the importance of others (family members, teachers, coaches, clergy, patrons, & mentors) to being able to commit 10,000 hours, "the magic number of greatness," to (Colvin's term) "deliberate practice." The success of the various outliers whom Gladwell discusses is not exceptional or mysterious. "It is groundedin a web of advantages & inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier,in the end, is not an outlier at all."
Is personal success really personal? - By: Giorgio, 29 Dec 2008 
I always argued with friends that we never quite know how a successful individual or a company as made it big.
Of course we all know about the endless working hours, the "talented" individual & the help of a focused team.
But if this was the rule we will have had far more successful people & companies.
Gladwell analysein a very entertaining & insightful way, how the individual itself is just a minor part of a far bigger mechanism that takes place to make his life a success. Social environment, culture, ethnicity, family background, timing & even generation size play an amazing part on the reason why people outperform their peers.
Thousands of self-help books & videos that focus on just your ability to "make it big" (and the slightly guilt feeling of not doing enough) can finally be put aside & considered what they are, self-help books for the writer's fortune...
slightly underwhealming - By: Ms. L. V. Wilson, 29 Dec 2008 
I wanted to love this, really I did, but it's one very simple idea (albeit a fairly good one) spun out to fill an entire book. Not up to the standard of "The Tipping Point".
Entertaining Read - By: NeilC, 28 Dec 2008 I'm a fan of Malcolm Gladwell having read his previous Blink & The Tipping Point. All his books are about interesting topics & are toldin a way that keeps the reader engaged. Similarly to the other books the criticism can always be made that he makes about 4-5 valid points & stretches them out to a full book but when the writing is engaging & takes you on a journey it doesn't really matter.
The book itself takes you through what drives success. Arguing that it's a combination of intelligence (both IQ & emotional intelligence), luck (opportunties & timing), cultural context & hard work (the much-reported 10,000 hours). All this could be argued to be fairly obvious but through the examples & anecdotes Gladwell dispelled many myths at the same time as entertaining.
All-in-all a good read.
