Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell
Why is the fact that each of us comes from a culture with its own distinctive mix of strengths and weaknesses, tendencies and predispositions, so difficult to acknowledge? Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from - and when we ignore that fact, planes crash.
Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed.
Outliers are those who have been given opportunities - and who have had the strenght and presence of mind to seize them.
We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that’s the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?