Outliers

So what's an outlier - Obama is, if it were 100 degrees in New York City in January, and so on. You've got to be an apprentice for 10,000 hours, for 10 years to achieve brilliance. It takes time and persistence to achieve super success. This is the subject of Malcolm Gladwell's (author of The Tipping Point) latest book "Outliers." Click the picture to watch him talk about the concept.

I heard him speak today (one of the perks of working at Microsoft) on a slightly different aspect of the book - the capitalization of human potential. For instance, did you know that 1:6 kids who get an athletic college scholarship actually go to college! Here are the sources of constraints on capitalization of potential:

a. Poverty: Test done at Stanford of 250,000 students. For 20 years they track the top 0.1% with highest IQ and found it doesn't equate to success. Genius kids from poor families did not make it as the ones from rich/well educated family backgrounds.

b. Stupidity: Arbitrary rules such as cut off for sports team selections skew the players to be younger and all concentrated immediately after that date causing the selection of younger players when older ones might very well be better players. We see this time and time again in all aspects of society.

c. Attitudinal: Why do Asian kids do better in math than other kids? The difference is huge. Asian kids believe if they apply effort, a math problem is solvable. Western kids feel they either do or don't have the ability to do math. Effort and persistence is more attitudinally prevalent in Asia than West.

I love this example: 40% of US entrepreneurs have been dyslexic. They learn to compensate by delegating - having others doing their reading/writing, they are better at oral skills, they learn to problem solve cause your life is one big problem, they learn to be a leader.

Another myth buster - smaller class size has no advantage - except for very disadvantaged kids in early age. What if that disadvantage is something you compensate for - you learn self-reliance, just as important as a trait as having a teacher pay attention to your kids.

So here's the really fascinating question asked: what are the customized disadvantages that are really advantages? Many cultures, the Parsee, Lebanese, Ethnic Chinese: the roles they've played are a pattern of accomplishment - kind of extraordinary disadvantages but also advantages. I interpret that as - they take more risks and have less/little to loose.

Here's what fascinates me about Malcolm's latest work - imagine if we layer quantum physics/metaphysics on top of this? Do tests of people applying positive psychology vs. not. I bet there would be a lot of myth busters in our midst.