Outliers - 2

Successful men are shaped by a.) The Eco system that supports them and b.) the individuals, good old, hard work. These two things make them what they are (successful). There is no such thing as a genius making it on his own with limited efforts (probably the only exception is the case of one Swiss patents office clerk named Albert Einstein).

Accumulated Advantage - Gladwell, in the opening chapter talks about the Canadian (ice) hockey team and how most of the players in the national team were born in the first quarter of the year (Jan-Mar). This is because the cutoff date for joining the junior’s team is Jan 1. Boys who turn 10 by Jan 1 are in the same team as boys who turn 10 in the later part of the year; and hence have a greater physical advantage and outplay others. Obviously these guys are then groomed to be national players with superior coaching and opportunities and they just get better and better. I got intrigued by this theory and wanted to check on the current Indian Cricket player’s data, I was surprised to find that 62% of them are born in the last part of the year (Sep-Dec). Some cutoff theory working here too, I guess. The point is, if we recognize this bias, we can groom many top class players (from across the year). Gladwell calls this Bias as “the accumulated advantage”; you have the advantage of being born at the start of the year (or at the end of the year if you are in the Indian cricket team) and because of that get all the other advantages of good coaching and preference. It is not pure meritocracy.

The 10000 hour rule – This which pretty much says that if you want to excel in anything you need to put in at least 10000 hours of hard work on the stuff and hence fine tune your talent. He quotes Beatles and Bill Gates as examples. Beatles put in at least 10000 hrs of music (esp. between 1960 and 1964) and Gates had unlimited access to computers at School (it also helps if your family is already rich and funded many of those computer equipments). In all, it comes to at least 20 hrs of work in a week for 10 years and you will be a master in the chosen area.

Genius – Gladwell profiles Christopher Langan who has a super IQ of 195 (90-109 is normal and anything above 140 is considered to be Genius), but works as a bouncer (security guard at bars) and later settles in as a farmhand to take care of horses. Gladwell goes on to write what went wrong along the way and why Langan could not realize the full potential of his intellect, in spite of being the most intelligent man of America (world). The bottom-line is that the Eco system was not there to support him (he had a poor and difficult childhood) and also could not sustain the university system that is ill equipped to manage someone as exceptionally gifted as Langan.
This story of Langan is contrasted with that of Robert Oppenheimer; Oppenheimer being equally brilliant and equally emotionally unstable (he tries to poison his tutor at Cambridge). The difference is; Oppenheimer gets to be successful (Oppenheimer is known as the father of atom bomb and was heading the Manhattan project to develop an atom bomb during WWII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project)) and this is not just because he is brilliant, but also has the right upbringing, his parents are wealthier, well connected and also let him grow intellectually by providing a nurturing environment.

The subsequent stories about early Jew immigrants in New York having a difficult life as tailors toiling many hours to make a living, but ensuring that their next generation move ahead and become successful lawyers, again focuses on the hard work and related reward, the culture and the unfolding of events (the boom in filing litigations and hostile takeovers).
Interesting chapter is “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes”; in which Gladwell talks about the connection of culture to the number of plane crashes in a country. It goes like this: in a country which has a culture of respecting and not questioning authority – the number of crashes are high compared to a country that has little or no respect to hierarchy or question authority if required. What is happening in the cockpit is that the co-pilots fail to question or correct the captain’s critical decisions even if he feels that it is incorrect and this leads to crashes. An airline that encourages the culture of questioning authority, encourages a co-pilot to question a captain’s decision and this can avert a disaster. There is a great body of work done by Geert Hofstede