...In the book "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell challenges the commonplace notion that people that have reached fame, fortune, or other types of great success have been born blessed with genius or brilliance. He states that "people don't rose from nothing" (Gladwell, 2098, p. 19). The author goes on to claim that "outliers," that is, individuals who achieve a level of success that is a result of that persons abnormally exceptional talent, "do owe something to parentage and patronage." Aside from talent, a variety of other factors come into play when determining who will achieve (or is more likely to achieve) success. Some of these factors are the following: inherent/natural talent, opportunities presented to the individual, how hard the individual...
Words: 277 - Pages: 2
...In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, Gladwell invalidates the rather common conception that those who are successful rise from nothing through pure hard work. He does this by introducing the Matthew Effect as part of his argument. The Matthew Effect can be described as a circumstance in which those who are already at the top, continue to be given opportunities, which later causes them to “rise above,” or simply be more at an advantage than others. Gladwell also gives examples where this phenomenon is present, from sports to the school system. In the classroom, there is always that notion that those who are high performers should be given more advanced work to be able to keep the student aware and not fall behind. At a young age, I was that student being given extra work. I was always the child to get near impeccable grades. Teachers would notice and grant me with certain opportunities they did not give other children. This of course, only made me a stronger student. The Matthew Effect concept applies to me in the way that I have been given more...
Words: 555 - Pages: 3
...Some people say that it is wonderful to have a genius mind because you can learn any things rapid by yourself, you are able to solve problems quickly and nothing is hard or difficult for you. Since you have a genius mind and there are no obstacles in front of you, you might have thought that it is easier for you to succeed or reach some significant achievements. However is that absolutely right? From the book Outliers, The story of success written by Malcolm Gladwell and my experiences, having a creative mind is better than having a genius mind. First of all, people who have a creative mind can always have new ideas. Some people might ask, what are the benefits with it? With those new ideas they can invent new things which makes their life and other people's life easier. One of my friends who does not like to study and definitely does not have a genius mind once...
Words: 599 - Pages: 3
...In the book 'outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell States that there is no such thing as a self made person. That if you succeed in life it depends on who you are and where you came from. I disagree with this statement because although this may be sometimes correct, it isn't always true . there are many people who have created success for themselves and are famous now. Such as Jim Carrey and Tyler Perry. Jim Carrey grew up in a not so wealthy family. During junior high Carrey to get a job and help out his family with money. Carrey and his family was forced out of their home and had to move to Scarborough ,Where they lived in a camper Van. Not so long after Carrey dropped out of high school to get a job become a full time to stand up comedian....
Words: 316 - Pages: 2
...evidence of advantages such as birthday, family background, and small windows of opportunity. Malcolm Gladwell's first advantage successful people have could be their birthday. This fact is obvious when comparing professional athletes. The most obvious example is in Canadian hockey Malcolm Gladwell's first advantage successful people have could be their birthday. This fact is obvious when comparing professional athletes. The most obvious example is in Canadian hockey where some children are pushed above others unfairly with their hidden advantage that is their birthday. This correlates with success because it sets where they will be in terms of their team and the sports cut off dates. Malcolm Gladwell's second advantage successful people have is their family background. In the epilogue of outliers, Gladwell describes his ancestors lives and all of the advantages brought to him by those successes. He also points out that in New York many years ago, Italian people had an ancestral advantage of sewing skills that help them thrive in their new country. Gladwell will states, " Who we are cannot be separated from where we are from." This is very true also in terms of culture...
Words: 523 - Pages: 3
...Author, Malcom Gladwell, in his book, Outliers, examines what it takes for a person to become successful. His purpose is to inform his readers on how success is achieved through opportunity, practice, and other people. He adopts a determined tone in order to achieve this. Throughout this book, Gladwell successfully achieves his purpose by utilizing informative expositions to set up each claim, repetition for persuasion and emphasis, and logos to reinforce it with evidence and appeal to reason. When introducing a claim, Gladwell begins with the use of exposition to provide background information to his readers. The book begins with the “Roseto Mystery” (Gladwell 3) in which the author tells a story about a group of Italians immigrating to America. The immigrants...
Words: 457 - Pages: 2
...school was difficult for me. I am a member of several clubs in which I would have to quit if I went to this school. Furthermore, I would likely have to leave my friends. However, sacrifices have to be made in order for success. This school introduces several opportunities for me in order to make new friends, as well as further my education and STEM-related skills. When I got a letter from GSSM, I had to weigh various pros and cons. My best friends go to my school, and I am in multiple clubs. But, academics are not all social and this school will benefit my education and prepare me for college. Also, GSSM still has several of the clubs I am already in and will help me make new friends. For an English assignment, I read the novel Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It defines how success is created and how several opportunities and sacrifices must be made in order to create it. I could relate to this. My life has so far been a series of opportunities that I have either turned down or pursued. GSSM is one of the opportunities that I have chosen to pursue....
Words: 508 - Pages: 3
...presented to the reader that there are not any successful self-made people, which is contrary to popular beliefs. The theory is presented in the book, Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), authored by Malcolm Gladwell. The theory is further defined by the premise that holds that success is enabled by a person’s culture, environment, when and where they were born, and a strong work ethic. These theories and examples of success are analyzed using the textbook, Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills (2013) by Andrew DuBrin. Several examples are provided in this paper that illustrate and support Gladwell’s thoughts on opportunity and cultural legacy. Keywords: cultural legacy, success, leadership, Leader Member Exchange Model, in-group, out-group, cognitive factors, behaviors, task-related attitudesAn Analysis of Outliers: The Story of Success The author of the book Outliers: The Story of Success, (2008) Malcolm Gladwell, leads us through several compelling chapters of discussion regarding selected individuals who are extremely intelligent, driven, some famous and ambitious. These are the characteristics of individuals that are perceived as being the highly successful members of our society. Successful individuals are termed as “outliers”, people who fall outside the normal acumen of human experience. Gladwell (2008) maintains that the way in which success is measured is wrong. Further, he argues that people are more a product of their environment, culture...
Words: 282 - Pages: 2
...Outliers: The Story of Success Analysis Latasha D. McCullar Managerial Leadership MNGT 5670 Dr. Rebecca Elliott October 16, 2013 Abstract Genius is over-rated. Success is not just about innate ability. It’s combined with a number of key factors such as opportunity, meaningful hard work (10,000 hours to gain mastery), and your cultural legacy. Random factors of chance, such as when and where you were born can influence the opportunities you have. Malcom Gladwell , the author of Outliners: The Story of Success, brings alive his assertions and thesis primarily through the use of individual success stories of athletes, computer genius, musicians, artist and community cultures. Introduction Gladwell uses a straight-forward, easy-to-digest style of mixing facts with examples and anecdotes in making his point that it is not shear genius or hard work alone that results in success. Instead, the he dives deep into the story behind exceptional performance in cultures, aptitude testing trends and individual achievements around the world. Gladwell argues that the upbringing of individuals greatly impacts their likelihood to succeed, including birth dates, access to specialized resources, parenting, and community culture. Discussion Gladwell separates the book into chapters highlighting the circumstances that resulted in the creation of each "outlier" he chooses to emphasize. According to Gladwell, the vast majority of hockey stars are born in the months of...
Words: 1037 - Pages: 5
...Critical Analysis Essay In reading “The Trouble with Geniuses Part 1 and 2”, Malcolm Gladwell has presented his purpose and a strong argument to the fact that talent can only lay the foundation for a person to succeed in life. The talent that is continuously discussed in this reading is a persons IQ, or Intelligence Quotient. A man named Christopher Langan is discussed throughout both chapters and is a clear example of a person with extreme IQ. Although Langan demonstrates a superior IQ, he never reached his true potential. Gladwell maintains that intelligence, even extreme intelligence, has a threshold. Having a high IQ is an advantage, but being smarter than others does not automatically make one more successful. “The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point” (79). A person not only has to be smart enough but when you factor in opportunities that are taken full advantage of, that person’s success greatly increases. Gladwell further proves his point in these chapters when he explains a study done by Lewis Terman. Terman performed standardized IQ testing for geniuses and attempted to demonstrate that a person who showed a genius IQ rating would clearly determine the success of that individual. Terman’s results between Group’s A, B, and C reemphasized Gladwell’s point that mere intelligence is not the sole identifier that leads to a person’s success. Terman concluded, with more than a touch of disappointment, “that intellect and achievement are far from...
Words: 925 - Pages: 4
...An Analysis of Outliers: The Story of Success XXXXXX MNGT 5670 – Managerial Leadership Webster University Abstract A theory is presented to the reader that there are not any successful self-made people, which is contrary to popular beliefs. The theory is presented in the book, Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), authored by Malcolm Gladwell. The theory is further defined by the premise that holds that success is enabled by a person’s culture, environment, when and where they were born, and a strong work ethic. These theories and examples of success are analyzed using the textbook, Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills (2013) by Andrew DuBrin. Several examples are provided in this paper that illustrate and support Gladwell’s thoughts on opportunity and cultural legacy. Keywords: cultural legacy, success, leadership, Leader Member Exchange Model, in-group, out-group, cognitive factors, behaviors, task-related attitudes An Analysis of Outliers: The Story of Success The author of the book Outliers: The Story of Success, (2008) Malcolm Gladwell, leads us through several compelling chapters of discussion regarding selected individuals who are extremely intelligent, driven, some famous and ambitious. These are the characteristics of individuals that are perceived as being the highly successful members of our society. Successful individuals are termed as “outliers”, people who fall outside the normal acumen of human experience. Gladwell (2008)...
Words: 3336 - Pages: 14
...Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”, analyzes the traits of successful people in an incredibly unique perspective. Gladwell attempts to explain how the outliers of our society using statistical analysis , considering and explaining every confounding variable imaginable. A perfect quote from Gladwell perfectly exemplifies the overall theme on why individuals succeed or fail, “They had to look beyond the individual. They had to understand the culture he or she was a part of, who their friends and families were, and what town their families came from”. Though hindsight bias led to me believe it sounds quite logical; reading and understanding Gladwell’s message has forever changed my perspective on success in our society. The book changed my ability...
Words: 285 - Pages: 2
...Examining Globalization of Ford through the analysis of Outliers Why are some people successful, while others tend not to be? Is there some sort of pattern that can explain this phenomenon? These questions lead to a network of different answers in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell tries to explain that success is determined by different factors, many of which is beyond a single person's control. He does this by giving real world examples of how these factors can truly make or break a person's chance of becoming successful. By examining and analyzing these certain situations, Gladwell is trying to show how the business world can be approached from a different ethical viewpoint. The ethics behind the stories of the people in the book can be further used to look at Ford as a whole and how Ford can be improved upon using these ideas. The idea of an outlier is that it is a person whose talents and achievements have gained them notoriety and most importantly, success in the field they are focused on. With that being said, Gladwell writes about the stories of different outliers, many of whom achieved certain status by a set of circumstances. One of these examples can be explained through the idea of the 10,000 hour rule. The popular rock band The Beatles can be used to describe this rule. Gladwell (2008) explains that "By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, in fact they performed live an estimated twelve hundred times. Do you...
Words: 1392 - Pages: 6
...Triarchic theory of intelligence From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | This article relies on references to primary sources. Please add references to secondary or tertiary sources. (February 2012) | The triarchic theory of intelligence was formulated by Robert J. Sternberg, a prominent figure in the research of human intelligence. The theory by itself was groundbreaking in that it was among the first to go against the psychometric approach to intelligence and take a more cognitive approach. Sternberg’s definition of human intelligence is “(a) mental activity directed toward purposive adaptation to, selection and shaping of, real-world environments relevant to one’s life” (Sternberg, 1985, p. 45), which means that intelligence is how well an individual deals with environmental changes throughout their lifespan. Sternberg’s theory comprises three parts: componential, experiential, and practical. Contents * 1 Different components of information processing * 1.1 Componential / Analytical Subtheory * 1.2 Experiential / Creative Subtheory * 1.3 Practical / Contextual Subtheory * 2 Challenges * 3 See also * 4 References * 5 Bibliography Different components of information processing Schematic illustrating one trial of each stimulus pool in the Sternberg task: letter, word, object, spatial, grating. Sternberg associated the workings of the mind with a series of components. These components he labeled the metacomponents, performance...
Words: 1632 - Pages: 7
...Critical Analysis In the article How Successful People Think, Roger Martin explores the way successful leaders come to new ideas and solutions to their problems by embracing “integrative thinking”. He explains it as having a capacity to hold two opposite ideas at once and finding a middle ground that is superior to both. Even though this article was published in Harvard Business Review and it’s target is educated audience (mostly in business field), language and style of writing are articulate and clean. Author does not use over technical words or examples that common person wouldn’t know. Title is bold, bright and hard to miss. Pictures are set up to be inviting and on the point (brain, light bulb). Writer is targeting people who have a wish to improve their leadership skills and recognizes that this quality is spread throughout all social classes and educational levels. His tone is light, supportive, conversational and readers can tell that author is personally involved in the subject: “… wisely, I might add…”,”…I have interviewed…”. In conclusion of the article Mr. Martin’s voice turns even more declamatory: “But I refuse to believe that the ability to use our opposable minds is a gift reserved for minority of people…” Roger Martin is the dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto. His passion for the subject is undeniable, but evidence he presents appears personal, weak and contradictory. He claims that “…(successful leaders) share somewhat...
Words: 840 - Pages: 4
