Why is Malcolm Gladwell so brilliant?

I worked the best overtime of my life last Wednesday. My boss needed someone to go to a nonprofit event in order to count cash receipts and make sure money was transported properly--typically a boring task. But when I read the description of the event, I almost peed my pants. Kai Ryssdal (you know, the guy with the awesome voice and biting questions that hosts Marketplace on NPR) was going to be interviewing some guy named Malcolm Gladwell. Apparently he has written some books.

The night was fantastic in two ways. First, I got to talk (albeit briefly) with Kai. I ended up counting cash in his dressing room, so we had this awkward moment after the event where my hands were full of dollar bills and he just wanted to go home. But that didn't prevent us from shooting the breeze. Apparently, his biting questions had gotten the better of him, leaving him with laryngitis. His voice is so rad that it didn't make any difference.

(okay, some of this is overstatement, but really, Marketplace is the best show on radio. 6:30, 89.3, KPCC)

The second reason the night was so fantastic is a bit more thoughtful. This guy Malcolm Gladwell is quick and had biting answers to match Kai's questions. He writes for The New Yorker most of the time (which I don't read. the articles are too long, like this blog post), and when he's tired of writing for magazines, he writes books. His most recent book is called Outliers, and it's about how exceptionally talented people become exceptionally talented. He writes about Bill Gates and Michael Jordan and people like that. I haven't read his book, but I'm going to write about his ideas anyway. :P

What struck me was his emphasis on luck and chance in the development of an exceptional talent (or exceptional success. how many times do you think I can use the word exceptional (5) in this post?). He spoke about how a disproportionate number of tech/dot.com billionaires were born in the year 1955. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Paul Allen. The guys at Sun Microsystems. Some other folks I don't remember. He explains that it is not coincidence that each of these outliers was born in 1955. You see, being born in 1955 means that a person was 21 years old in 1976, which was the year that Popular Mechanics made it clear that the home personal computer was a real possibility. Each of these future savants was deeply inspired by this article, and since they were 21 (as opposed to being 24 and working at IBM, the old evil empire, or 17 and still screwing around with Legos) they were the perfect age to decide to build their own tech empires. The random-ness of the universe blessed these 1955 billionaires with being the right age at the right time.

Basically Malcolm was saying that a person can be exceptionally (6) talented, but without a bit of luck fostering the right circumstances, this person will never reach the top of their field. Barack Obama is a perfect example. He has lived his entire professional life in post-civil rights America in which African Americans have relatively more social mobility than in the past (praise the Lord). Had Barack been born 100 or even 15 years earlier, he would not have been able to become president. He probably would not have even been able to attend Harvard Law School. (It's sad to think about all the excellent leaders, thinkers, and artists that the world has missed because chance was not on their side, particularly when this lack of chance was a direct result of human sinfulness.)

Apparently Malcolm is also successful, so Kai asked, "So, why is Malcolm Gladwell so brilliant?" Great question and Malcolm gave a good answer. He described his childhood and the love and enjoyment of hard intellectual work that his parents instilled in him. He talked about being a kid and having two friends who were also savants--and how they recreated Monopoly with their own rules (like selling options on properties and starting with $1; these kids were hardcore). These friendships created an atmosphere of competitive intellectualism that pushed Malcolm to a higher level of intelligence that catapulted him into his current position as a writer. Malcolm was very clear that his childhood upbringing was the impetus of his success, and he was clear that he was grateful for it.

I have another thought on the source of Malcolm's exceptional (7) talent, but I will save it for another post as this one is too long already. In the meantime let me know what you think of Malcolm's idea. Do you agree about the role of luck or chance in the development of exceptional talent?