Book Review: "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Galdwell Is Both Entertaining and Useful
December 16, 2008 | Sovestor
An interesting business book to read: "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Galdwell.
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Reviews by leading media:
- Gladwell's Outliers: Timing is Almost Everything
- Books of The Times: It’s True: Success Succeeds, and Advantages Can Help
- Extract from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: A gift or hard graft?
I found the book to be both entertaining and useful. Especially:
- “The 10,000-Hour Rule” — the number of hours of practice that a neurologist named Daniel Levitin says are likely required “to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything.”
- The statistical fact that current technology titants such as Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Bill Joy, Steve Jobs, Vinod Koshla, Eric Schmidt all born between 1950 and 1960, which mean when they reached teen age and adulthood, the wave of computing and later interrnet age really give them the 'right environment' to exercise their abilities to succeed. If they were born in 1970 or 1930, it would have been different. In addition, they all have team of people (co-founding team) who share the vision and surely later share enormous benefits of successes in the companies they co-started.
My Take:
After thinking about this topic, I predict (with all its uncertainties) that for those smart and able individuals who are now in either their teen age or adulthood period, I do think the current and long-term opportunities available now and that are in emerging demand are in the following interconnected areas:
A. Technology solutions that work in satisfying human beings desire to do good things to the society and get rewarded by doing so. (e.g.: afterall, human beings as well as companies will get tired doing good things to the communities and environment without any benefit nor recognition of their efforts).
B. Clean alternative energy solutions that effectively replace both antiquated and inefficient existing energy supplies to reduce or eliminate environmental hazards and life risks (e,g.: how many people worldwide die statistically every year inside coal mining facilities or oil exploration facilities?)
C. Drug and biotech solutions with much faster R&D cycle, FDA approval cycle, and radically faster time-to-market (e.g.: so many biotech and drug companies die down or stagnant because of super-lengthy process to get the drugs approved by FDA)
D. Semi-capitalist semi-socialist financial and economic solutions to effectively address deleveraging economic era and global climate change (e.g. this is an interesting combo because even during this crisis, California, despite its mounting budget deficit, recently approved a law that is pro-environment.)
I strongly believe successes in any or combination of these should fall to solutions that are truly effective, efficient, and provides the widest positive impact to human beings globally. In this era of social connectivity and meritocracy, this almost certainly requires a collaborative, passionate, and highly focused team of people who are intelligent and dedicated to work together to achieve extraordinary things. There is nothing more effective and rewarding than working together in such a team to achieve common vision and goals.
"I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature." ~ John D. Rockefeller.
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