Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell

This is the second book of Malcolm Gladwell I am reading. The first one being Tipping Point in which he had explored how some ideas grow rapidly and become popular. In this Book "Outliers: The Story of Success" Gladwell explores the factors that contribute to success. 

We are all brought up on the romanticized fact that hard-work and determination leads to success. Malcolm counters this by arguing that the factors that lead to success are not so simple but are a combination of opportunity & legacy.

Gladwell looks into the lifes of those who have risen meteorically to the top of their fields, analyzing developmental patterns and searching for a common thread. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell seeks to dissuade us of the notion that genius and greatness are predominantly a function of innate ability and IQ. He rightly notes that while IQ is certainly a contributor, it reaches a "point of diminishing returns" after a while: once people score about 130, IQ becomes less important and "intangibles" become more important.

The book, then, focuses on what these "intangibles" are. Gladwell suggests that things like what income level, culture, and time of a child's birth are important contributors to success, as well as a person's tenacity and agility.

He argues that there is no such thing as a self-made man and that the origins of high achievement lie instead in the circumstances and influences of one's upbringing, combined with excellent timing. The Beatles had Hamburg in 1960-62; Bill Gates had access to an ASR-33 Teletype in 1968. Both put in thousands of hours-Gladwell posits that 10,000 is the magic number-on their craft at a young age, resulting in an above-average head start. 

Reemphasizing his theme, Gladwell continuous to remind the reader that genius is not the only or even the most important thing when determining a person's success.  He takes the example of Christopher Langan, a man who ended up owning a horse farm in rural Missouri despite having an IQ of 195 (Einstein's was 150). Gladwell points out that Langan has not reached a high level of success because of the environment in which he grew up.  Further, Gladwell compares Langan with Oppenheimer, the father of the US atomic bomb. Noting that even if both had the innate natural abilities that should have helped them both succeed in life, Gladwell argues that Oppenheimer's upbringing made a pivotal difference in his life. Oppenheimer grew up in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan, was the son of a successful businessman and was afforded a childhood of "concerted cultivation". Malcom argues that these opportunities gave Oppenheimer the chance to develop the practical intelligence necessary for success.

Gladwell advances the notion that the success of students of different cultures or different socio-economic backgrounds is in fact highly correlated to the time students spent in school or in educationally rich environments. How does culture matter? He talks about the discrepancy between how many days per year American children spend in school (180) versus Asian students (280), and how many more social expectaitons Asian students are borne into. This will affect academic and other achievement. Gladwell further explores how culture shape up a person taking the examples of a "Plane Crash" and also from the life of his Mother.

Gladwell is criticized for too often falling prey to fallacious reasoning, inadequate and anecdotally based sampling, and oversimplified analysis. But the way Gladwell has written the book you unconsciously nod with him when you see his arguments. I enjoyed this book and will give it a rating of 4 / 5

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The Long Tail - Chris Anderson

In this book "The Long Tail" Chris Anderson expands on his article written in October 2004 on Wired called "The Long Tail"

Basically Chris Anderson is talking about an economic phenomena currently being created in the present world where we have almost unlimited choice because of the Internet. He talks of a future which is not "Hit-centric" but a future where "minorities" and "niches" thrive and everybody can find something to their taste. 

Anderson explains, "The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to this: Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail."

He mostly talks about the phenomena in Entertainment but the same can be observed in all walks of life. Take this case If you could watch Movies only at the Cinema hall near your house you would get a very limited choice and more-so your choice would be limited by the "HITS" or what is liked by majority of the customers of the Cinema Hall. But if you order movie DVDs from Netflix your choices explode by a factor of millions. Log in to YouTube your choices explode further. 

Long Tail can be explained by considering the figure on the Right. 

In most industries (films, music, books, etc.) a few hits make most of the money, and demand drops off quickly thereafter. But the Demand, however, doesn't drop to zero. 

The products in the Long Tail are less popular in a mass sense, but still popular in a niche sense. 

Basically the Demand never drops down to Zero.   What that means is that some businesses, like Amazon, Google Apple iTunes can make money not just on big hits, but by serving the long Tail. 

Anderson identifies three 'forces' that drives this Long Tail and the niches that populate it?

1. More stuff is being produced. Technology and the internet make it cheaper and easier to record and distribute your own songs, publish your own writings and so on. This lengthens the tail.
2. There is better access to niches, again thanks to the reach and economies on the net. This fattens the tail.
3. Search and recommendations connect supply and demand. This drives business from hits to niches.

Anderson explains these 3 forces further in the book and further explains how the abundance of choice is both good for the customer and the marketer. He tries to take us beyond the entertainment industry where he explores how EBay, Lego,  Kitchenmaid etc also have explored and exploited the power of the long tail. This is where I feel Anderson loses the plot If I may say, he goes to explore "Long Tail" everywhere. 

He writes "there are now Long Tail markets practically everywhere you look," He calls offshoring the "Long Tail of labor," and online universities "the Long Tail of education." He quotes that there's a "Long Tail of national security" in which al-Qaida is a "supercharged niche supplier." At times, it feels he is just going around looking for examples to suit the theory.

I would further like to argue that their are many industries that don't rely on the economics of information products.  For E.g. Take the Steel Industry, which Anderson doesn't discuss, —The Long Tail doesn't seem to tell us much about the future of the steel industry. It's not really clear how Tata Steel or any other still company might benefit from expanding the types of steel it makes available. (There are different types of steel - Mild Steel, Hard Steel, Automotive Grade Steel etc). It would cost Tata Steel a lot to produce them, and few customers would require a very different type of steel. So basically no Long Tail in steel Biz. Same can be said for other industries dealing with physical products like Oil, Diamond etc

The other disappointment is that Anderson doesn't do a very good job of describing strategy choices for product producers. After the first 6 chapters you have understood the entire book, the rest of the book is just repetition. My advice would be don't read the book either. Read his 2004 article and you are all set.  

I will give the book a rating of 2/5. Anderson explores a phenomena successfully,  The reading of the sociological and physiological factors affecting the current world is interesting. But like I said the article is more than enough for it.

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