Behavioral Economics
OUTLIERS
The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay Books, 2011
EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES The reader will be able to:
• Describe how cultural advantages accumulate over time
• Examine the effects of hidden opportunities, and cultural legacies that enable them to understand, work hard, and make sense of the world in ways that others cannot
• Demonstrate how the unusual opportunity to cultivate a skill enables some to rise above their peers
• Explain the rise in 20th century New York of the unique culture and skills of Eastern European Jewish immigrants
• Describe the elements necessary to produce highly successful people
• Discuss the importance of developmental age in a cohort that predicts athletic success
• Assess the intelligence necessary for technological success
• Apply the “10,000 hour rule” in designing training programs
• Explain the relationship of rice paddies to math skills
• Analyze the ethnic component of success and failure
• Use the importance of luck in working with patients or designing training
• Apply the importance of “meaningful work” in clinical and research applications
Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His 1999 profile of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference (2000).
In this stunning investigation of success, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on a journey through the world of "outliers"-the best, brightest, and most famous-asking the question: what makes high-achievers different? Gladwell argues that in order to solve this riddle we must focus on the contributing elements around the successful-their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way, he explains what the Beatles and Bill Gates share in common, the reason you've never heard of the smartest man in the world, why almost no star hockey players are born in the fall, and why Columbian and South Korean airplane pilots are more likely to crash. Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will transform the way we understand success.