Critique Of Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

Successful people are generally thought as the work of talent, brilliance, and ambition, but as Malcolm Gladwell argues in his book “Outliers” that might not always be the case. After writing his two previous books “Tipping Point” and “Blink”, Gladwell became drawn to writing about unusual things after he was convinced that “they always made the best stories”. This became the basis for his interest in beginning writing “Outliers”. Gladwell noted (in a brief summary of the book) that "the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work." Gladwell poses interesting questions and evidence to support his claim on the idea of “self-made” people being, actually the work of hidden advantages,

He argues that birth, age, family, culture, and background each play a role in an individual's success . Gladwell frequently states his belief on the “10,000 Hour Rule” which is the rule of having to ascertain the minimum of 10,000 hours of mastery to be successful. He furthers his claims by using anecdotes and stories of successful individuals like Bill Gates, The Beatles, Christopher Langan, Joseph Flom, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Gladwell states that all these successful individuals were the product of these unforeseen advantages and opportunities, which helped them propel to success. For example, Gladwell discusses the birth dates of elite Canadian hockey players competing in the final club match, which in his overview, is evident that a staggering majority of the players, almost 70 percent, are born within the first three months of the year. Gladwell points out that, “It’s simply that in Canada the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1st” (24). Gladwell comes to the

While he does provide us with logical and reasonable evidence, his theory of success does attain some validity, however, he excludes the value of core individual effort, value of hard-work and determination and frames the research in such a way that it makes it seem impossible for those who have the ambition, drive, and motivation to achieve success, to amount to nothing. Although his theme on the 10,000 Hour Rule is reasonable to an extent, but it does not in any way guarantee success. Paul McCartney, after having read the book, answers to an interview about his opinion on the book, “I've read the book. I think there is a lot of truth in it, I mean there were an awful lot of bands that were out in Hamburg who put in 10,000 hours and didn't make it, so it's not a cast-iron theory. I think, however, when you look at a group who has been successful... I think you always will find that amount of work in the background. But I don't think it's a rule that if you do that amount of work, you're going to be as successful as the Beatles.” It makes sense that attaining several playing hours can definitely pave the way for greatness, but that doesn’t seem to be the case to those bands who didn’t make it in Hamburg. All of his findings are quickly counter-argued through stories of people