The Story of Success

Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell discusses some of the main points from his most recent book 'The Outliers: The Story of Success,' which focuses on why it is that certain people are massively successful while others fall to the wayside. Gladwell's interesting evidence suggests that whether we know it or not, we are enabling part of the population to succeed due to several accepted notions about talent, like that some people have superior, innate abilities.

Malcolm Gladwell explores three conditions that he says constrain capitalization or limit the exploitation of human potential in America: poverty, stupidity, and culture. For stupidity, Gladwell explores the effect of hockey age cut-offs on the success of young hockey players. Since the cut-off is January 1, the largest children tend to get picked to play hockey at a higher level, which allows them more practice time, games, and one-on-one coaching, making them better in the long run, when in the beginning they were really just bigger than the boys born in the second half of the year.