Book: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
ISBN 9780316017923
Reviewer: Agha Shahriyar Khan

Review

The book “Outliers” is the analysis of the phenomenon of success from the sociological perspective. Its author, Malcom Gladwell, questions the common notions which consider success is only a product of individualism: intelligence, capabilities and struggle, hence, it has nothing to do with outside forces. The book, on the contrary, propounds that success is function of multiple factors such as social environment, cultural legacies, available opportunists, individualism, meritocracy and practice. In short, the book claims that no one is born genius or outlier. The world opens the vistas of opportunities to individuals and then put them into certain social settings where they exploit these opportunities and sharpen their skills more efficiently than the rest. Consequently, they do wonders, and people consider that there is something special in outliers. In the words of Gladwell, “It is not the brightest who succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of decisions and efforts. It is rather a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities- and who had the strength and presence of mind to seize them”.

The author tries to justify his theory of success through the stories of various outliers: Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, Bill Joy, the founder of Sun microsystems, and Joe flom, the pioneer of law firms (expert in the battle of corporations take over). By delineating their stories, the author accentuates certain points which are generally ignored but play vital role in their success. Such as the time and generation in which they born, their cultural legacies, the opportunities they got, the social setting which compel them to practice more than the rest. All these factors pushed them to make dent in the world. There is nothing special in them. The world makes them special. As Bill Gates said about himself, “I had better exposure to software development at a young age than I think did anyone had at that period of time, and all because incredible lucky series of events”.

It is pertinent here to mention that success is not a luck. Lucky is someone who wins a lottery. It has nothing to do with success or outliers. Outliers are those who are given opportunities and they seized it in the possible way. So, we can’t claim that they are lucky. Yes, they are the best opportunists in the positive sense.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to explore the formula behind success

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“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”