Outliers Case

Outliers

If we were born a couple of centuries before our life in term of success’ expectations probably would be much easier and simple than now. During the medieval times life expectancy and career opportunities were given by the family and social conditions that a person was born with.

In other words nobody was in control of their own success. It was a random lottery from the destiny. Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers, 2008) try to tell us that success is not for everybody and in order to achieve that we not only need talent and hard work. We also need a big and important first opportunity that not everybody can have. Opportunity that we can compare with the social conditions during the medieval times.

When we talk about successful people we usually touch points like what do they have that we don’t or what do they sacrifice in order to achieve that success. Ordinarily the story that we found is one full of sacrifices and effort like the author described in their book, “…our hero is born in modest circumstances and by virtue of his own grit and talent fights his way to greatness” (Gladwell, 2008, p.18). A great example that the author mentions in his work is the Hockey Major Junior leagues. Those kids are virtuous players, the best ones in their age. And as the writter described they can’t buy a place into that leagues. Players are selected in accord of their capacities and abilities. But we should ask ourselves. Every single kid has the opportunity to rich those leagues? What differentiate those players from any other child who play in their school? Do they get some opportunities that the rest didn’t? Do they get something that the rest didn’t get?

Gladwell (2008) tried to convince us that “this kind of personal explanations of success doesn't work. People don't rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage” (p19). All of us owe something to somebody. Even our genes and the circumstances that we were born in. But is this true? An Individual can rise from nothing?

During the lecture we found many examples of people who achieve the highest positions, fame and fortune and the story that comes behind them.

But before to start with the stories of the people who succeed let’s analyze what do the experts found about them. According to Gladwell (2008) the Psychologists around the world after being do many studies about innate talent they discovered that it exist, but is not enough to reach expertise. The book offers us many examples and in all of them people who started with almost the same conditions of talent and resources become much more different. The real differences are evident when we saw how many hours of practice they have. And surprisingly there is a rule. Ten thousand hours of practice may be the necessary to become an expert in any field. (38, 39). Those ten thousand hours give us an idea