Gladwell 3 « 800 CEO Read

April 30, 2008

Gladwell 3

Filed under: Uncategorized — dylan @ 1:12 pm

Malcolm%20Gladwell.jpg Following in the wake of The Tipping Point and Blink, Little, Brown and Company has announced Malcolm Gladwell’s third book. Entitled Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t, it is set to be released in November of this year. I haven’t been able to track down much information about it online, but the publisher catalog reads:

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”–the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

The catalog also includes this intriguing excerpt from the book itself:

OUTLIERS is a book about success. It starts with a very simple question: what is the difference between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else? In OUTLIERS, we’re going to visit a genius who lives on a horse farm in Northern Missouri. We’re going to examine the bizarre histories of professional hockey and soccer players, and look into the peculiar childhood of Bill Gates, and spend time in a Chinese rice paddy, and investigate the world’s greatest law firm, and wonder about what distinguishes pilots who crash planes from those who don’t. And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us–the brilliant, the exceptional and the unusual–I want to convince you that the way we think about success is all wrong.

November can’t come soon enough.

Comments Off

http://cause2impact.blogspot.com Brian Francis Hume

The release is perfect for me considering the fact that my birthday is in November! It will definitely be on my wish list for my birthday this year.
http://biancarocksout.com BIanca

I REALLY can’t wait for this book to come out. I honestly wish it was out right now and I could buy it.
Definitely pre-ordering…
Udayan

This should make an interesting reading. I would very much like to compare what Malcolm Gladwell has to say vis-a-vis the view of Nassim Nicholas Taleb in “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life”
http://www.connectme360.com Brian Hayashi

If Gladwell is writing about Gates then I wonder if he’ll include Gary Kildall in his account.
Kildall was the inventor of CP/M, an operating system that by some accounts should have been the operating system for the first IBM PC. While there are conflicting accounts why Kildall’s company Digital Research failed to close the deal, history tells us that Bill Gates licensed 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, rechristened it PC-DOS, thereby creating the foundation for what we now know as Microsoft. Kildall apparently never quite got over this, and apparently every new MSFT invention (Windows, Office, etc.) was an additional dagger through his heart.
Previous studies of genius suggest that we have gone through cycles ever since the Reformation: there are a series of inventions which lay the groundwork; young people, generally from smaller towns, are inspired by these inventions and move to larger city centers; they meet each other and start a firefly-like maelstrom of ideas and concepts; and from that both great innovators and almost-woulda-couldas are borne. When you look at the last three hundred years it is amazing to see how these cycles have played out: for example, the American Revolution and the French Revolution appear to be much more tightly related than one would initially surmise.
We often hear bromides that the enemy of great is good enough. It may be that when it comes to the success of Gates over Kildall, or Edison over Tesla, that the same killer instinct that propels us to creative genius, also drives us crazy by convincing us to overthink the market.
In my blog, I talk about such cycles of history and how the early creative burst that gave us television mirrors the development of the Internet, and how Twitter’s woes had been presaged by CB radio:
http://connectme.typepad.com
tndal

“…why Asians are good at math…”
Asians aren’t _innately_ better at math than other groups. The latest studies indicate that Asians _lag_ _behind_ other groups as far as the genetic contribution to problem-solving is concerned.
Good news is that they make up for it by studying longer hours.
http://blog.ideafarm.co.za Simon de Haast

@Brian: This reminds me of the piece in Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, where he talks about the DC-3 Dakota, and the ‘component technologies’ – the groundwork – that combined to make it one of the most successful airplanes ever. The point being is that those ‘technologies’ had been around for years, but some clever genius was able to combine them in new ways, or see an opportunity to ‘glue’ them together in an effective way to solve specific aerodynamic/economic issues.
In the same way, I guess successful people in Gladwell’s take are those that can see those new combinations AND have the innate ability to execute a plan of action, a la Bossidy and Charan’s book.
Another riff on this, is the ability to see figure/ground in the McLuhan sense…maybe I should turn this into a blog post
http://www.workbenchcreative.com greg Scott

I love genius chasing and reading about success. It give me inspiration and hope, sort of like drinking, or religion. I think the pre-marketing of this book is pretty genius as well. I just ordered it. Nice job.
http://www.workbenchcreative.com
elliott johnson

This book sounds absolutely ridiculous and I can’t believe it is receiving such BS hype…
“It starts with a very simple question: what is the difference between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else?”
Just the way the promotional text is worded indicates it will be lopsided…the term “outliers” refers to people like the Beatles…it should not be describing people who do something “special” (as defined by Gladwell as $).
Does Gladwell consider writing BS business books to be ‘something special with his life’ ?
Paul Mills

The University of Minnesota has already published a lot of data on this issue as they had collected a lot of data over the years based on their IQ testing. (University of Indiana also has a lot of info on the subject). One can most of this information doing a google search-you don’t need to wait until November for the book to come out. The University of Minnesota studies show that it isn’t high IQ that makes one successful, but rather determination and persistence in following an idea or in pursuing an intellectual course of study. Persistence does indeed pay apparently. The issue is more complex than my quick post, persistence seems to be at the heart of success.
Gary Meeg

@Elliott: the reason the book gets attention is not because of it’s title or description, it’s because Gladwell’s previous two books are brilliant.
You can get an idea of what the book will be like here:
http://gladwell.com/2008/2008_05_12_a_air.html
http://gladwell.com/2007/2007_12_17_c_iq.html
/Gary
ari goldberg

gladwell writes books that tease us into believing we can all know the secret of success. he rarely delivers anything worthwhile.
he did not invent the concept of the tipping point and it has already been proven wrong.
StephenT

Gladwell cites the Beatles apprenticeship in Hamburg strip bars, playing 7-hour marathon shifts onstage, as being the critical foundational element for their later unique success. Unfortunately for that theory, the Hamburg bar circuit was a staple for aspiring Brit bands of the late 50s/early 60s — particularly those from Liverpool. The list of those who played those same shifts includes Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, The Jets, Tony Sheridan, and many others, all of whom who fell into total obscurity afterward. It may not make as good a story, but probably the major element in the Beatles success was simply blind random chance: the right talented people with very similar goals happening by chance to come together at a particular place at the most propitious time. Once in a very great while somebody wins a state lottery twice in a row, too. Sorry, Malcolm, but some things just *happen.*
Ben R

Gladwell seems to overlook the findings from Dan Seligman’s book “A Question of Intelligence”, when attributing Asian math performance to rice cultivation and Jewish success in law on being born in NYC in 1930. Seligman notes the above average performance on jewish people on the verbal component of psychometric tests. The recent paper by Cochran & Harpending on Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence indicated there was a genetic basis for this:
“What accounts for this remarkable record? A full answer must call on many characteristics of Jewish culture, but intelligence has to be at the center of the answer. Jews have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested. (The widely repeated story that Jewish immigrants to this country in the early 20th century tested low on IQ is a canard.) Exactly how high has been difficult to pin down, because Jewish sub-samples in the available surveys are seldom perfectly representative. But it is currently accepted that the mean is somewhere in the range of 107 to 115, with 110 being a plausible compromise.
The IQ mean for the American population is ?normed? to be 100, with a standard deviation of 15. If the Jewish mean is 110, then the mathematics of the normal distribution says that the average Jew is at the 75th percentile. Underlying that mean in overall IQ is a consistent pattern on IQ subtests: Jews are only about average on the subtests measuring visuo-spatial skills, but extremely high on subtests that measure verbal and reasoning skills.”
The three authors conclude this part of their argument with an elegant corollary that matches the known test profiles of today?s Ashkenazim with the historical experience of their ancestors:
The suggested selective process explains the pattern of mental abilities in Ashkenazi Jews: high verbal and mathematical ability but relatively low spatio-visual ability. Verbal and mathematical talent helped medieval businessmen succeed, while spatio-visual abilities were irrelevant.
The rest of their presentation is a lengthy and technical discussion of the genetics of selection for IQ, indirect evidence linking elevated Jewish IQ with a variety of genetically based diseases found among Ashkenazim, and evidence that most of these selection effects have occurred within the last 1,200 years.”
In terms of East Asian math/science performance, Seligman notes they tend to perform above average on the non-verbal component of psychometric tests which is consistent with the math/science performance:
“Severely compressed, his explanation goes about like this: Some sixty thousand years ago, when the lee Age descended on the Northern Hemisphere, the Mongoloid populations faced uniquely hostile “selection pressure” for greater intelligence. Northeast Asia during the Ice Age was the coldest part of the world inhabited by man. Survival required major advances in hunting skills. Lynn’s 1987 paper refers to “the ability to isolate slight variations in visual stimulation from a relatively featureless landscape, such as the movement of a white Arctic hare against a background of snow and ice; to recall visual landmarks on long hunting expeditions away from home and to develop a good spatial map of an extensive terrain.” These, Lynn believes, were the pressures that ultimately produced the world’s best visuospatial abilities.”
Fernando Barcena

Actually the reason that Asian country students perform better at math is that the curriculum for 4th grade students in these countries include being taught in some fashion the math concept that the Identity Rule is the CORE MATH CONCEPT. This understanding is why they perform so well as a group in math. The argument that the asian languages create some intellectual advantage does not explain why other non-asian speaking countries also perform at high levels. Those countries that understand the importance of the Identity Rule refer to it as The Golden Rule of Math.
Any person with good math skills knows the Identity Rule. What appears to be less obvious to educators in the U.S. (based on U.S. student math performance) is that the IDENTITY RULE is the CORE MATH CONCEPT, and that it can be easily taught. My contention is that these concepts can be understood by a student within an hour to an hour and a half, and that once understood (the Gestalt) by the student, the student can then easily understand all subsequent math instruction, without any further tutoring. An understanding of how to use the Identity Rule to manipulate fractions gives the student the ability to perform in math in the 98th percentiles, throughout elementary and high school just like students in asian countries.
Some additional thoughts on the argument that the asian languages create some intellectual advantage to perform better at math. This argument does not explain cause. It is merely an observation after the fact. The same is true about after the fact observations that differences in socio-economics, race, gender, intelligence, environment, single families, nutrition, homogeneous groups, etc., etc., explain why some perform better at math than others. These variables are not causal either. They make for good reading, but do not explain causality.
I argue that the obviously causal variable is BORDERS. Within some borders/(countries) the school systems include in the curriculum, teaching their students in some fashion, the CORE MATH CONCEPT, the Identity Rule, and how to use the Identity Rule to manipulate fractions. After the 4th grade, all math involves manipulating fractions. Students that are taught this CORE MATH CONCEPT easily, (I emphasize), EASILY, learn all subsequent math instruction. The result then is that in spite of differences within BORDERS of differences in socio-economics, family structure, gender, etc. their students as a group excel at math
Contact me for free 2 page tutorial on how to use the Identity Rule to manipulate fractions.
f.barcena35@comcast.net
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