In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell sets forth a grand image of what factors constitute a person’s ability to be successful. In observing my case studies, the historical case being John D. Rockefeller and David Hostetler–my father–I believe that predictions of success are not absolute, and that Gladwell’s factors alone do not guarantee success. I believe that Gladwell’s prospect of success is conditionally correct, not absolutely correct. First off, my team and I conducted a survey to analyze “average” people, as a comparison to the outliers we later chose. I then conducted research on the aforementioned living and dead case studies. We chose to study people on three specific factors of success that Gladwell made arguments for: Community, …show more content…
In the case of Rockefeller, he was provided with great opportunities–stretching into his adolescence–to practice the prerequisite skills for an effective business owner. Furthermore, his residence in Cleveland–a city that boomed with industry mere decades after he was born–gave him prime opportunity to make enormous profit in his time and become one of the richest men in human history. The feedback from the survey and my case study were less remarkable, however. The results from a mere 24% of people suggested their hometown benefitted them in the ways Gladwell described. My father said that the many cities he lived in growing up didn’t offer such opportunities, regardless of the city. This would contradict Gladwell’s theory that community and opportunities thereof benefit some people, not all, making his claim only conditional. For the ethnic factors that Gladwell describes, the outlook is drastically worse, however. Only a shocking 5% of our survey’s respondents felt that their experience was similar to the ethnic influences …show more content…
So in this particular instance, Gladwell’s theories crumble almost completely, being untrue for my case studies and survey respondents on the whole. Finally, the place where Gladwell’s theory is most prominently accurate is when it comes to the 10,000-Hour rule. Survey respondents were in fantastic agreement that not only do they get a chance to practice regularly, but would take more opportunities to practice their skills should such an opportunity be granted to them. Rockefeller’s historical records also confirmed that he, from a notably young age, was exposed to the business and social skills that would give him the finesse to achieve the level of success. My Father also agreed on this point, saying that a talent of his is mechanical repairs, and the main reason he has such a competency for it is that he routinely repaired and managed mechanical systems in many of his early jobs. All these collections of information would suggest that skills and success in those respective skills is, as Gladwell claims, linked to the early access to practice opportunities to acquire ten thousand hours of