Business Book Report - Outliers: The Story of Success

BUSINESS BOOK REPORT-

OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS

BY GLADWELL MALCOM

Business Reading Class

Date: 11/06/14

Name: Trang Minh Nguyen

Student ID: 802296152

Gaining public attention for his first published book “The Tipping Point”, Gladwell Malcom made another hit on his third book “Outliers: The story of success” in 2008. In this book, he focused on discussing the indeed factors that contribute to people’s far success in life. Gladwell brought up some factual scenarios and historical events or people to pin up his points of view. Normally, we all have widespread assumptions that those who are extraordinarily successful must be smart and ambitious to strike for their goals. In short, their internal characteristics such as self-devotion, motivation, and talent results in their great achievements in any specific field. However, in “Outliers”, Gladwell pointed out that the surroundings such as family, friends and other common knowledge can also be the important determinants. Gladwell emphasized that those people are not self-made; on the contrary, he said that they get highly influenced by the combinations of opportunities and cultural legacies that give them a chance to learn or work harder. The author also defined the word “outlier” as a person who gains achievement in a way out of our usual expectations and understandings. Hence, he gave various stories of many outstanding people such as Joe Flom- a famous lawyer of this nation, smart Asians leading in math, a genius Christopher Langan, or some well-known musicians, and so on. What’s so interesting about this book is that he tried to make up some arguments with himself and not directly jumped to his points. Moreover, he obviously had many observations as well as investigations about the factors of the success. I was completely amazed by his analysis and his way of conveying the stories. Even though some stories may need some tests of validity, we cannot deny that Gladwell had come up with many astonishing theories of success.

I wouldn’t have a chance to finish every chapter of the book. However, I was mostly attracted by two chapters with the enticing captions, which are “In Hamburg, we had to play 8 hours” for Chapter 2: The 10,000-hour rule, and “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.” for Chapter 8: Rice Paddies and Math Tests. The main concept I’ve learned from this book is that we tend to take some false facts as a common sense; however, they have been proved completely wrong. Gladwell gave various examples to prove the thought that the innate talents are born to be successful completely wrong. He began the chapter 2 with the case of a computer programmer, who later got his own company and invented his own computer program. It is true that the field of computer program is wide-open and sometimes any participant is thought to be full of talents and accomplishment. On the contrary, the achievement of success is the combination of both talents and preparation. He mentioned about a programmer called Bill Joy. He was a “math wizard” at the age of 16 years old. He got recognized when he was little and always asked about everything that was unclear. Even so, Joy said that solving a math problem is not hard; instead, it just needs some more time to double-check. Hence, true talents may get more advantages but it is not enough. The same is true for proofs in chapter 8 about Asians learning math. The author also provided the readers with another example of a girl called Renee who was recorded while solving the 8th grade math problem. She was not mathematic-born, which means she may not be good at it. But she clung to the problem and only stopped when she found the answer. And Gladwell also included the cases of some musicians, who could not compose outstanding masterpiece at the early beginning of their careers such as Wolfgang, Mozart. Instead, through years of endless efforts, they got highly-recognized as they are now. Another significant story is the one of rice paddies in China. They are obviously built, not opened the way any other field is. They are simply the “masterpiece” of whoever cultivates rice. From the moment of carving the patterns as well as terraces for the rice paddies to the time the farmers choose and sow the right kind of rice requires much time and hard work. It needs several weeks for the seed field to turn into a grown green crop and some processes need to be handled carefully by hand. A cycle of these steps would take place right after the harvestation. Perhaps because of this time and effort consuming activities, rice has always been well-appreciated by Asians. People can easily enjoy the sweetness of rice but may not imagine how much work the farmers have done for the beautiful rice crops. Rice agriculture is “skill-oriented” in every step from weeding, fertilizing to using wisely every square inch of the rice paddy. After all of these stories have been brought up, I got persuaded that success can be created by hard work and great effort. It can’t be denied that everyone is born as a talent. Some can be smart in some fields, but with only intelligence, they cannot reach their goals. Moreover, I have to agree that people who succeed in their achievements must be the opportunity-grasping ones. They know what their opportunity is and make good use of it. For example, as mentioned in this book, Bill Joy wouldn’t have had a chance to work with computers if he hadn’t accepted to study at Michigan, The Beatles wouldn’t have improved their singing skills if they hadn’t grabbed the chance to perform at Hamburg, and so on.