Book Review: Outliers

In his third highly engaging and enjoyable book, Outliers: The Story of Success, best selling author Malcolm Gladwell explores and challenges societies long held assumptions about what creates an individual success. Gladwell has framed Outliers around three central questions, “Why do some people achieve so much more than others? Can they lie so far outside the ordinary? What is the Secret of their success?”.

Through these three questions Gladwell has explored many case studies of successful people including “geniuses, business tycoons, rock stars, and software programmers” in order to uncover the key reasons that people are actually successful.

Outliers (As well as Gladwell‘s two other books – Blink and The Tipping Point) is especially relevant to Industrial Designers (Or Designers in general) for one highly pertinent reason – the way in which Gladwell observes and then breaks down long held, and often wide spread, assumptions. Gladwell has obviously devised a successful formula for identifying and breaking down assumptions, and then communicating his thesis on the breakdown and final conculsion. While his ‘formula’ is not currently published anywhere, through taking the time to read his books I found that Malcolm Gladwell uses several tools, that Designers should adopt and utilise in their practice, in order to break down assumptions, which can thus lead to greater insights and help to create amazing products, experiences and services.

1.External Influences

Malcolm Gladwell constantly uses external stimuli to inspire him, as well as to uncover and identify assumptions that are potentially wrong. In Outliers, his early point of reference is the Canadian Hockey League which leads him to look at many other areas where similar patterns occur.

2. On the shoulders of Giants

Gladwell constantly utilises the research of others to uncover, understand, explain and connect things into the larger picture. Such as the research and investigation by The National Transportation Safety Board into the Korean Air 801 Crash: NTSB/AAR-00/01 that he utilised in chapter seven of Outliers. Which he utilises to build a stonger case for his point of view and thesis.

3. Case Studies, Stories & Analysis

By using stories of particular events or about people, Malcolm Gladwell is able to begin to construct case studies with which to analyse these stories and then uncover relevant details. He also uses many elements of effective story telling, as well as a conversational tone of writing in his books, to engage his readers.

4. Details

Malcolm Gladwell always drills down into the details, this helps him to identify the ones that seem insignificant in the case study, but in fact may not be. In Outliers one such example is illustrated when he looks at Bill Gates story. In the telling of the story, even Bill Gates often glosses over several key facts that actually allowed him to be successful, which Gladwell picks up through careful analysis of the details of the story.

5. Questioning

After delving into the details Gladwell questions and challenges any assumptions that are held, in order to find and fill in the holes.

Outliers: The Story of Success is available on Amazon. As are Malcom Gladwell‘s two previous best-selling books The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
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