Harnessing Success: Malcolm Gladwell's Insights into Opportunities and Cultural Legacies
An
outlier refers to something different from the rest. It is a title of Malcolm
Gladwell’s non-fiction book. It became the best-selling book thanks to its
great influence and inspiration about achieving success. It is a book that
explores human characteristics as factors of the society. It also explores how
success is not only limited to personal strength but to opportunities that are
present in an individual. As a
non-fiction Malcolm provides his truth about success based on his own
perceptions, research, and understanding that he has gathered for many years.
Malcolm explores some of the reasons that lead to great levels of success. He examines
the lives of some of the most successful people in the world such as Bill
Gates, celebrities and sports men and explores how various aspects of their
lives led to their successful lives. The book was positively received by critics
and readers and felt too many as an autobiography of Malcolm because of drawing
on personal experiences and perception. It is also considered as one of his
most personal writings. Cultural as well as forces in the society play a major
role in the development of success in people. However, for many years people
have forgotten personal attributes as factors of success. The ability to
capitalize on opportunities as well as maximize use of time provides great
opportunities to individuals to have success. The analogy of being self-made
has also been used for a long time. However, it only works effectively when an
individual is well capable of utilizing the advantages that exist around them.
Not everyone is well bestowed with opportunities and people with the same
capacities may have different outcomes of success, and this depends on the
opportunities that surround them as well as their abilities to utilize these
opportunities.
The
ability of people to quickly make sense of the world around them and use the
information provided to them by the society and culture becomes a great
incentive for their success. Malcolm describes outliers as people who are extra
ordinary. They are people with great abilities in specialization and use
collaboration to learn and develop better skills in their endeavors. In the
first parts of the book, Malcolm explores the aspect of timing as incentives
for success. A great example is successful people such as Bill Gates who were
born in the fifties at a time when opportunities for computer technologies were
slowly building in the eighties. He also explains the month of birth an example
being the month of January. Some hockey players that have had great success in
their games were born in the month of January. He uses this aspect of time to
explain the factor of a cumulative advantage associated with people born early
in the year. In hockey, the people born this early are characterized by being
more physical, therefore, have a better chance of becoming more athletic, and
thus they have more success in the game. This is an aspect is used to explain
the availability of advantages which are responsible for the success of a
person. This explanation also applies to another aspect of life whereby those
with opportunities that already surround them have a better chance of success
if they are capable of taking advantage of the opportunities and building upon
them for success.
Malco0
also focuses on the aspect of cultural legacies either in the form of success
or failure. Cultural legacies take many generations to build and influence
people towards the cultural perception that are important for success. Some
cultural legacies are characterized by success and as they are passed on from
generation to generation so is the success accompanied by it. The same goes for
cultural legacies associated with failure. The two main aspects put forward in
the book is opportunity and legacy and are two aspects that bring out
exceptional people from the society.
Exceptional
people are those that are developed from successful cultural legacies and also
have great opportunities around. He emphasizes on the 10000hours rule which he
considered the time limit for an individual to have mastered success. This is a
time spent perfecting ones own craft, specializing and learning more about it.
Bill Gates and the Beatles are good examples of people
who passed the 10000-hour rules and what came after was a great level of
success that led to the development of exceptional; people.
Malcolm
expresses his perception of success as a factor of inheritances and advantages
that surround individuals. They for major factors for the development of
exceptional people. They explore the aspect of self-determination cultural
factors and opportunities already in existence. Advantages exist differently
around people, and it may depend on the cultural perception of people to
effectively utilize the opportunities around them. Cultural legacies influence
the perception that people have of the world around them. The book is,
therefore, an inspirational non-fiction that explores the factors of success.
It provides perception as well as practical information to explain the
influences of opportunity and cultural legacies as factors of success or
failure.
Works
Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success.
1st. Little, Brown and Company, 2008.
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