n Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell approaches the subject of success and attempts to de-mystify it; our culture, he says, is full of misconceptions about what makes someone exceptional, that person with remarkable achievements that everyone looks up to and even regards as a superior.
Gladwell explains that being an outlier does not entirely depend on talent, and that successful people aren’t so different from others who did not achieve as much. In fact, innate talent is but a tiny percentage of that on which success is based: there are external factors that have a much bigger influence than we are accustomed to acknowledge.

Opportunity plays an extraordinary part in stories of success. That is the first thing that sets outliers apart from less successful people: their chances, something that they are not responsible for; a casualty. An undeniably precise example is the case of Bill Gates: a child with talent, yes, but also one who studied in one of the few schools in America that had computers at the time, and who became familiar with them from a very young age. Enter something almost as important as innate ability: practice. Gates was sufficiently exposed to computing so that, when he went on to study at a University where he could have free computer time, he had already accumulated a good part of ten thousand hours of experience, the right amount of time it takes to become very good at something.
Practice is encouraged in anyone who wishes to develop a skill. Parents, teachers, coaches, all promote practice amongst children so they can get better at their interests or abilities. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that someone with both opportunity and many hours of experience will be more likely to achieve success than someone as equally talented but with neither of those two elements on their side.

Other factors, very similar to opportunity, also play a role in the life stories of outliers: for instance, being born on the right year or in the right place. A man born in the United States thirty years before the boom of industrialization in the mid-1800s had more chances of starting a factory and then becoming a wealthy entrepreneur than a man with the same drive but born elsewhere, or a few years too early to take advantage of the moment.
Gladwell also explores the controversial subject of Intellectual Quotient. It is only logical to associate success with intelligence; however, it is not the most accurate conclusion. In fact, although IQ does play a role in becoming an outlier, anyone above a certain high score is pretty much on the same level when it comes to being successful at life. Genius does not equal reaching one’s goals. An example is the comparison between Chris Langan -the smartest man in America today- and Robert Oppenheimer, a man with probably as intelligent. Langan’s difficult life and his inability to deal with the authorities and make himself heard and respected contrast strongly with how smoothly Oppenheimer climbed to the top of his career, in spite of also having had problems with his superiors.
The factor that marks the difference between these two highly intelligent men is knowing how to deal, knowing the right things to say, the right moves to make; having a sense of entitlement in front of others to make yourself respected: practical intelligence. That is the one difference, and it stems from the way their parents taught them to behave in society, and that, on the other hand, depends on their socio-economic level: middle to upper-class parents (like Oppenheimer’s) will infuse their children with a greater sense of entitlement than lower-class parents (like Langan’s). Once more, innate talent is subject to an external variable, in this case parenting, influenced -but not determined- by economic position.
Finally, the author introduces the influence of cultural background. People from different countries have different ways to approach authority and even distinct cognitive processes, brought on by their linguistic peculiarities or their cultural work ethic. For example, Asian languages such as Chinese have a simpler way of conceptualizing and pronouncing numbers than others such as English, which makes Asians better disposed for math. In consequence, they are the most likely to be successful at careers that involve numbers, but not because they are more intelligent than non-Asians. Similarly, an American pilot is more likely to successfully make an emergency landing in JFK Airport than a Guatemalan pilot; not because he is better, but because he feels enough entitlement to treat the air-controllers aggressively and get the directions that he wants, whereas the other pilot is from a culture in which there is much more reverence and distance from authority.
The conclusion is simple: many things have a hand in the makings of an outlier. Talent is important, but not enough. People with potential must work hard, knowing who they are and where they come from so they can maximize their cultural or social advantages and make up for their shortcomings. But the role that opportunity plays in success is so remarkable that the biggest lesson extends itself to the very structure of our society: the more chances are given to young people, the more outliers are likely to emerge, and the richer society will become.

BY ELVIRA BLANCO AND SOPHIA KELLER