Success in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers Essay Example

Outliers, a book written by Malcolm Gladwell, informs the reader about individuals with extraordinary abilities who go on to achieve extraordinary success. Gladwell states that an Outlier is someone “who doesn't fit into our normal understanding of achievement.” In his book, he discusses the advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and timing of those who became very successful. Along with hard work and asserting yourself to shape the world to your desires, timing and the proper opportunities can make success easier to access. 

There are many components that can lead to success. In Outliers Gladwell focuses on the importance of timing. To be able to achieve success the correct timing is essential. The proper timing is a key component to shaping the world to your desires. Gladwell explains his idea by providing evidence by looking deeper into hockey players. Glawell noticed that the majority of all hockey players had similar birthdays. Gladwell explains, “More players were born in January than in any other month, and by an overwhelming margin” (Ch1 p3). In this all the older hockey players had a better chance of becoming more successful because they were more mature and bigger than the younger players. All of this is dependent on their age and birth month. This is seen in the all-star teams, NHL, and Ontario Junior Hockey League. Gladwell introduces another man named Bill Joy. Joy’s story also features the importance of timing. Joy was very invested in computers. During this time computers were becoming more popular. Glawell describes Joy’s story as, “How the outliers in a particular field reached their lofty status through a combination of ability, opportunity, and utterly arbitrary advantage.” (Ch2 p1) Bill Joy was born at the perfect time when computers began to become popular. With Bill’s knowledge and curiosity about computers, this was a perfect time to get into that business and become successful. Gladwell clearly communicates that timing is an important factor in becoming successful. 

Along with the correct timing, the right opportunities also make success easier to achieve. Gladwell looks further into billionaires and the year of their birth. Gladwell discovered that fourteen billionaires were born within nine years of each other. This helped them become successful because they were born when industrial manufacturing began therefore the economy was extremely well. With the businesses doing well when industrial manufacturing began this created the right opportunity for these individuals to become successful. Gladwell states, “It really matters how old you were when that transformation happened” (ch2 p8). These billionaires were born at the right time in order to be given the opportunity to become successful. Bill Gates and his story is another example of how opportunities play a key role in success. Similar to Bill Joy, the popularity of computers began to increase. Gladwell explains it as, “Computers up to that point had been the massive, expensive mainframes of the sort of sitting in the white expanse of the Michigan Computer Center”(Ch2 p9). By stating this Gladwell is referring to the opportunity Bill Gates had to become successful with computers. Being introduced to computers during that time was a crucial opportunity that made Bill Gates successful. Gladwell also states, “So far in Outliers, we’ve seen that extraordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity”(Ch3 p5). With the importance of timing, opportunities play a key role in becoming successful. The right opportunities can dramatically change the probability of being able to shape the world to your desires.

Even though the proper timing and opportunity can be labeled as advantages, there could be many disadvantages as well. But with close observation these “disadvantages” can be turned into advantages. The story of Joe Flom is a perfect example of disadvantages turning into advantages. Joe Flom used hard work and the right opportunities to make himself successful. Gladwell explains Joe Flom as, “A poor child of garment workers; that he was Jewish at the time when Jews were heavily discriminated against; he grew up in the Depression—turn out, unexpectedly, to have been advantage” (ch5 p2) With the disadvantages of Joe Flom, he was able to still be successful with the correct timing and the appropriate opportunities, he went from rags to riches. 

Throughout the book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell proves to the readers that with the correct timing and proper opportunity success is very obtainable. Gladwell supports this reasoning by providing evidence on how an individual's birth year can have an amazing effect on them being successful. There are many other examples of the opportunities and timing that help achieve success. Gladwell concludes that success is not so much individual but is primarily based on their opportunities and the timing of their interests.