Old Dominion University
Outliers Book Review
Nicholas Kurz
Introduction to Contemporary Business 110
Professor Usis
March 16, 2015
Outliers, a book about success and how it comes to a person. Malcolm Gladwell addresses several major points on how to become successful as well as the necessary steps you need to take in order to be successful. Essentially, Gladwell opens this book talking about the prestigious Canadian Hockey League. He states “Players are judged on their own performance not anyone else’s and on the basis of their ability not on some other arbitrary fact. Or are they?”(Gladwell 17) . This topic really hit home for me, because as I was growing up, I played travel baseball in the Amateur Athletic…show more content… His parents were able to afford sending him to a private school. This school was able to afford computers and Gates was able to work on programing as an eighth grader (51). That was an opportunity a lot of children his age were not able to experience because their families could simply not afford the tuition of the school. Gates had the opportunity to work on programing everyday thanks to this school so it is safe to say he had a pretty firm grip on how it all worked. Now he was able to do this thanks to his family having the money to set him up with that…show more content… Also about how just talent in an athletic event can lead you to success when in reality that is not the truth. This world revolves around economics; if you are able and are willing to spend the cash then you will eventually get what you desire. You do have to have to talent as well, but with that being said you just need to be average, If you can excel in just one category over everyone else you will stand out. Even though there may be children who are better they might not be seen because they cannot afford to attend these events. If The person has the money they will be able to get better opportunities. The exception is Mr. Joe Flom, he was able to turn nothing into something from hard work, but I promise some of his classmates at Harvard Law came from very wealthy families and were there because their money bought their opportunities. I do not believe most of these “opportunities” are luck they are money based. Every example used had someone who was successful who had some form of help and that is the premise that I do believe. I believe that you cannot make it in this world with out some form of