Outliers: The Story Of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
Subsection 1: First Quarter
By: Jose Maria Linares
1. Roseto Valfortore: Intro
• Town in the foothills of the Italian Apennines.
• Exodus of Rosetans to America, ended up
near Bangor, Pennsylvania
• 1894: 1200 Rosetans applied for American
Passport
• Roseto, Pennsylvania
1. Roseto: Issue
• Heart attack epidemic in the US
• Leading cause of death in men under 65
• Stewart Wolf, physician, investigated Roseto for heart attack
death rates
• Heart disease in Roseto, 50% of US
• No suicide, alcoholism, or drug addiction
• Roseto was an outlier, a place were the normal rules do not
apply.
2. Roseto: Hypotheses
• Dietary practices
– Found out Rosetans struggled with
obesity (41% of calories came from fat)
• Genetics
– Tracked down relatives of Rosetans,
but these did not share their heatlhy
condition
• Location
– People in Bangor and Nazareth had
death rates from Heart Disease 3 times
higher.
2. Roseto: Conclusion
• “The Rosetans were healthy because of where
they came from, because of the world they had
created for themselves in their tiny town in the
hills.”
• Understand heart attacks in a new way: looking
beyond the individual
• Culture he or she was part of have a profound
effect
Second Quarter
3. Correlation of Intellect and
Achievement
Through the second quarter of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
supports his argument of success by juxtaposing
achievement and intellect. According to him, “by no stretch
of the imagination or of standards of genius is the ‘gifted
group’ as a whole ‘gifted.’ We have seen that intellect and
achievement are far from perfectly correlated” (Gladwell
91). He exemplifies such statement with the case of
Terman’s ‘Termites’ by demonstrating how these, despite
having an IQ above 135, didn’t become successful people.
According to Gladwell, the IQ test is an improper measure
of success since it doesn’t evaluate a person’s practical
intelligence. Therefore, he concludes that after breaking the
threshold of a “good enough” IQ, the practical intelligence
becomes the tie-breaker.
3. Defining Practical Intelligence
Besides possessing a high IQ, which is required for
achieving high education and knowledge, the EQ
(Emotional Quotient) is crucial for a person’s Practical
Intelligence. As he defines it, practical intelligence
includes: “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when
to say it, and knowing how to say it for a maximum
effect” (Gladwell, 109). Thus, practical intelligence
becomes a tool for maximizing the IQ. While IQ is a
measure of innate ability, the EQ is acquired knowledge.
However, such knowledge is shaped throughout life and
here; Gladwell mentions how parenting (during
childhood) is essential to the development of Practical
Intelligence.
4. Parenting and Its Nature
To shape his argument on parenting, Gladwell alludes to a
study done by Annete Lareau on such matter. According to
Lareau, wealthier parents are heavily involved in their
children’s free time, while children in poor families are more
independent. She states that for poor children, their play time
“wasn’t soccer practice twice a week. It was making up games
outside with their siblings and other kids in the neighborhood”
(Gladwell 121). Here, the contrast of wealthy-kids and poorkids childhoods reflects the eventual development of different
personalities. While poor children develop a sense of
independence, wealthier ones develop a dominant personality.
Meanwhile, middle-class children build up a sense of
“entitlement,” as they enjoy the right to pursue individual
preferences. As a result, Gladwell concludes that different
personalities start to evolve from the moment people are
toddlers, until they die with distinguished traits.
4. Different Children From Different
Parenting Background
Furthermore, these children evolve to becoming different
people, with different ratios of Practical Intelligence. Gladwell
suggests that contrasting parenting backgrounds ignite a
variety of distinct personalities due to different experiences
through childhood. Also, children in different economic
classes establish particular relationships with their parents. For
example, Gladwell mentions that the working class and poor
children were characterized by “an emerging sense of distance,
distrust, and constraint. They didn’t know how to get their way
or how to customize whatever the environment they were in”
(Gladwell 130). On the other hand, wealthier kids establish
dominant traits, and are able to shape and blend the different
situations presented by their environment. Hence, when these
children grow up, only some will develop the “social savvy”
skills needed to manage a situation wisely. Even if all of them
are gifted with exceptional IQs, intellect is not the only
ingredient of success.
Third Quarter
The Three Lessons of Joe Flom
5. Joe Flom and his Story
To extend his argument of achieving success, Gladwell uses
Joe Flom as a stereotype of a typical outlier in this sense.
According to the information provided by Gladwell, the
reader depicts Flom as the typical poor boy who struggles to
obtain education, but finally ends up graduating from
Harvard’s Law School. Even though Flom exemplifies
Gladwell’s intentions congruently, the fact that Flom depicts
a stereotypical character makes Gladwell’s argument lose
credibility and interest. Therefore, since the moment
Gladwell mentions Harvard in his example, the reader can
imagine the end of the story: he struggles to find a job, and
decides to start his own law firm, which later becomes the
most important firm in the US. Indeed, that was the case.
5. Lesson Number One
Immediately after portraying the typical-success story, Gladwell
points out that even though Joe Flom is a stereotypical example of
success, the details of his life make him a true outlier, unlike many
other successful people. To accomplish this, he contrasts the live of
Flom with that of a Jew classmate he had at Harvard Law School:
Alexander Bickel. These two shared similar backgrounds since
Bickell was also “the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants
who lived in Brooklyn” (Gladwell 194). Unlike Flom, who went to
make his own law firm, Bickell struggled to find a job since he
wasn’t from the “right background.” At this point, Gladwell directly
points out how Bickell’s cultural and racial background blocked his
path towards success, as New York law firms would tend to exclude
foreigners as the image of their work. On the other hand, Flom
started his firm in the perfect moment to do so. Just like Gates and
Jobs did with computers. At the perfect moment.
6. Lesson Number Two
For the second lesson, Gladwell compares the success
stories of a father and his son: Maurice and Mort Janklow.
Both enjoyed a fruitful education and became lawyers;
however, their stories were pretty different. Here,
Gladwell’s previous argument of timing comes into place. I
believe the generational difference between a father and his
son might become critical aspects of success. In this case,
Maurice (the father) finished college and married just after
the Great Depression erupted. Therefore, his prospects of
high achievement were economically killed by the
Depression. On the other hand, Mort was born in the 1930s:
baby boom, later economic boom in the 1970s. Therefore,
even though Maurice and Mort might’ve enjoyed very high
IQs, and wide spectrum of achievement, Mort is the true
outlier. He had something his father lacked: demographic
luck.
6. Lesson Number Three
Unlike in Colombia, where success comes from wealthy
backgrounds (Luis Carlos Sarmiento, the Santo Domingo’s,
etc), in New York City it yields from a different
background. To illustrate this point, Gladwell exemplifies
his argument with the lives of many humble immigrants
from different backgrounds who end up producing
successful offspring. I can relate this argument to the life of
Leo Katz, whose parents migrated to Colombia after the
Holocaust and established a ‘Panadería’ in downtown
Bogotá. Even though they struggled to keep their business
alive and producing, they were able of producing successful
offspring. Leo Katz, nowadays, is the owner of Bogotá’s
most prestigious line of restaurant. Effectively, his
background contributed to his success. In a genetic aspect,
his parents gave him that instinct of finding success in a
lugubrious landscape.