Malcolm Gladwell says no individual can solely account for her success
Success is such a fascinating phenomenon that we keep a constant search for its parts. We come to it through ever newer books by behavioural and social scientists. We return ever so often to the nature versus nurture, wondering if the argument will be settled in a different way this time. We are addicts of the auto/biography, hoping to find in the account of a life some clue to its extraordinariness. And, always, we know that we are drawn to this because we suspect success will in the end remain unexplainable

If Malcolm Gladwell has his way now, some of that mystique may vanish. Gladwell, as readers of the bestselling Tipping Point and Blink would know, is a student of patterns. Give him a list, a compilation of facts, essentially any old ledger, even the bare bones of a life story — and he will emerge from the scrutiny with a theory. In Outliers, a study of why some individuals achieve so much more than others, he does so with a range of arguments, coming to stories of success from different angles, to explain success. Ultimately, his may not be the last words on the subject, but Outliers is interesting and well-recounted.

Gladwell is not in battle against the idea of innate ability. That’s still a mostly indefinable quality, he concedes, that contributes to success, explains genius. But it is never the entire explanation. Gladwell’s explanation is of many parts.
For one, he picks popular culture’s favourite examples of genius. Bill Gates who dropped out of college, founded Microsoft and changed software business. The Beatles who hit the music scene young and perfect. Or Mozart, music’s favourite boy genius. All three, far from just launching into the world with little more than their excellence, are unwitting adherents to the 10,000-hour rule. They practised and practised at what they would later excel. Gates, for instance, was fortunate to have parents who got him access to real-time programming in the 1960s, when it was virtually out of reach and when it would have been impossible for anyone to buy him if he had not been based in Seattle. Predictably, Gladwell tallies all the hours Gates logged to prove his 10,000-hour rule. Similarly, the Beatles had logged in 10,000 hours practising and performing before taking the US by storm. Mozart’s best work came after 10,000 hours of application. You get the drift.

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