I have always been a fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s work.. first, The Tipping Point, then Blink and now, Outliers – The Story of Success.

I have just finished reading Outliers and my first thought is that it was extremely short.. with Hardback books, the print is always larger and the cover itself adds to the thickness of it but it just seemed short… it could be that it was really good though! It’s about 300 pages and an easy and at times, an insightful read.

The book explores why some people are tuned in for greatness and others not.. he gives examples Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc. The book looks at what is commonly thought to be the story of success… brains, intelligence, hardwork etc. Quite commonly, what is missing is the environmental factors which can determine someones success and also the facilities which were available at the time.

With Bill Gates he mentions that not only did Bill have an insatiable desire to play with computers but coupled with the opportunity to do so made the difference..

I’m not going to go in depth as it’ll spoil the book but the chapter about the Korean pilots was particularly interesting.. how cultural psychology issues caused the relatively frequent plane crashes and not incompetance.. very interesting chapter how different people from different cultures take to authority and how they react.

There are a few examples of Outliers and they are backed up his analysis and from experiments.. it is long winded in parts but overall a decent read. I came away with a few interesting ideas which I think could have been summarised on an A4 sheet.