Yesterday I reviewed The World is Flat, 3.0, by Thomas Friedman. He focused on the middle class as the key to our future. Today, Outliers, published last year, but still remaining #3 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best –Seller List. Written by Malcolm Gladwell, formerly with The Washington Post and now a staff writer for The New Yorker, he is also author of The Tipping Point. The top of the cream of the success crop is featured here, but how they got there is somewhat of a surprise.
The essence of the theme is that you will almost surely NOT attain billionaire or sport superstar status unless you are dealt the right life cards. You can be brilliant, talented and work as hard as you want, but other forces will determine if you will become that famous.
The most striking example had to do with Canada and hockey. In a nutshell, almost all the successful players were born in January, February and March. This is because the eligibility cut-off to begin the season at the age of 10 is January 2, and a player born this month competes against those born that year until the end of December, or mostly nine-year olds, thus giving the early birthers the significant advantage of maturity.
Why is Bill Gates so famous for co-founding Microsoft? Well, he was very smart, had great parents, persevered, lived in an environment that allowed him to develop that necessary skill and was born in the mid-fifties. Most of the successes in this field, including Paul Allen (Microsoft), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple) and Eric Schmidt (Google), were at the right age to entrepreneur this field.
Similarly, of the 75 richest people ever, 20% were born in the United States from 1831 to 1840, including John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, etc. The American economy underwent its greatest transformation in the 1860’s and 1870’s, and you had to be born at the right time to take advantage of the railroads and Wall Street.
Want to be Nobel Prize winner? You only need to be so smart (in fact, super geniuses generally fall by the wayside because they may lack social skills) and not necessarily go to the best universities.
The story of Robert Oppenheimer, who ran the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, is particularly interesting. While he suffered from depression, at 38 was too junior to lead this effort, was a theorist, had questionable relationships and actually tried to poison his tutor at Cambridge, he had the right combination of brilliance, parents and social interaction skills to prevail.
I can go on and on, but there are two points. First, forget about becoming super-rich or world famous if you lack some key ingredients. But, second, you can still become rich and/or almost famous if you are smart enough, work hard and have a high social aptitude.
As I said yesterday, The World is Flat by Tom Friedman focuses not on the Nobel Prize winner, but the so-called mid-level, to determine if a country is to succeed. I’ve felt that as long as we cultivate the right 5% of our population, we will remain dominant. That is the theme of my education chapter in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity. Now, toss in Gladwell’s outlier concept and we have three totally different solutions for humanity, or, perhaps, individuals. Oh, in case you were wondering, an outlier, in this definition, is someone who is an extreme deviation from the mean.
-
Carlos seems now to be just below hurricane strength. However, his movement remains West to Hawaii, and strengthening is almost expected, for the path will continue to be in warmer waters. However, the below "heat" map of the Pacific shows that for Carlos to turn north near Hawaii, he will encounter slightly cooler waters. Hopefully, that will minimize potential problems. That other storm in the West Pacific, TD Soudelor is a weakening tropical depression about to strike Viet Nam.
No comments:
Post a Comment