What do Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs have in common? Quite obvious, isn’t it? All are leaders of the top technology firms(Microsoft, Google and Apple). But there is also another unusual similarity – all of them were born in 1955. Interestingly, Paul Allen, Steve Balmer(co-founders of Microsoft) and Bill Joy(co-founder of Sun Microsystems) were born in 1953,1956 and 1954 respectively. So, is there any connection between the great successes of these “Outliers” and the period, early 1950s? Malcolm Gladwell says “Yes”.

In his third and the latest book “Outliers”,Gladwell argues that a person’s success depends not only on her/his IQ and hard work, but also external factors like the time of  birth, family background, and unique opportunities. He also provides great examples of how traits unique to different ethnic groups trasmit through successive generations and how they impact the behaviour and success of the members of these groups. In short, he says that it is very important to be the “right person, at the right place, at the right time” to be succesful.

Gladwell divides the book into three parts – Opportunity, Legacy and Epilogue.

In the first part, he argues how opportunities play a key role in becoming succesful. For that, he compares the successes of Canadian Hockey players born during first half of a year with those born during the second half of the year. The backgrounds of Beatles, Bill Gates and Bill Joy are then examined and the correlation between the birth year and their success established. Gladwell then takes us through the lives of two geniuses, Chris Langan(who is tested to have an IQ of 195) and “The father of Atom Bomb”-Robert Oppenheimer, and explains how circumstances prevented Langan from becoming succesful while enabling Oppenheimer to be highly succesful. He finishes the first part by narrating the circumstances that were instrumental in the success of Jewish immigrants in USA.

In the next part – Legacy – Gladwell provides facts and anecdotes to argue that people’s behaviour can be attributed to their ancestors and the way their ethnic group behaved a few centuries earlier. For this, he tells why there were a number of village fights in the Appalachia region(with lot of Scottish-Irish immigrants) in US during the the early 19th century and why there were lot of plane crashes involving Korean pilots. He then proceeds to explain the connection between paddy fields in east Asia and the high mathematics scores of Asian kids. He concludes by giving the example of succesful kids in New York special schools. With this example, he argues that if the right environment is made available, anyone who is willing to put in lot of hard work can become quite succesful.

In the final part, the Epilogue, Gladwell narrates his own history and shows that his family’s unique circumstances played a crucial role in making him a succesful “Outlier”.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and was impressed by the depth and breadth of the research he did for the book. The ideas are presented in an easy to read format. On the negative side, there is some repetitiveness  and also some not-so relevant details. Apart from that, this book is quite enjoyable and like his earlier books, The Tipping Point and Blink, Gladwell succeeds in engaging the reader and making “Outliers” a must read.