“I have two parallel things I’m interested in,” Malcolm Gladwell once said when asked about the inspiration behind his writing. “One is, I’m interested in collecting interesting stories, and the other is I’m interested in collecting interesting research. What I’m looking for is cases where they overlap”. You might even go as far to say that Gladwell is a man who is defined by the books he has written. Indeed, when you visit his sparse looking website, it’s only the titles of his bestsellers that you see underneath his surname. We’ve curated a few of our favourite takeaways from three Gladwell classics: Outliers, The Tipping Point, and David and Goliath.
- A big fish in a small pond
The story of David and Goliath was the inspiration behind Gladwell’s book of the same name (if you’re a bit fuzzy on the narrative, check out our summary for a refresher). One of our favourite takeaways from this book was the idea that it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond. “For the sake of progress,” Joel D Canfield wrote in his summary “we need challenging peers. For the sake of contentment, though, we should choose peers among whom we can shine. Either choice should be deliberate, not unconscious.” - The Tipping Point
We all know what the word epidemic means, but Malcolm Gladwell radically redefined it his classic The Tipping Point as the moment when the public becomes feverish for your product or service. There are three aspects of an epidemic, but we’re concerned here with the third, known as the Tipping Point, the “name given to that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once,” writes Gladwell. “The Tipping Point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” Our Tipping Point summary has two ways to help your burgeoning business reach its own Tipping Point. - 10,000 Hours
No, I’m not referring to the Macklemore & Ryan Lewis song—although the rapper was undoubtedly inspired by this concept and name-drops Gladwell in the track. This one comes courtesy of the runaway bestseller Outliers, and is based on research which suggests that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert at something. “[P]ractice isn’t something you do once you’re good,” writes Gladwell. “It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” That being said, as Chris Taylor wrote in his summary, “someone must possess a certain level of skill or certain ‘benchmark’ characteristics in order to succeed in their chosen field (tough to find many 5’2″ basketball stars), but once that benchmark is met, what separates the good from the great is practice. (Michael Jordan is, after all, only 6’6″—tall by ‘normal standards’—but fairly average in the professional basketball world.)” What separated him from the pack? Practice!
What’s your all-time favourite tip from Malcolm Gladwell? Let us know in the comments!
