
Why Malcolm Gladwell is Wrong - cwan
http://www.pehub.com/61262/malcolm-gladwell-must-be-stopped/
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ique
I might be a bit tired right now so I couldn't grasp what she meant. But was
there ever a counter-argument in this post?

"I don’t know, because it’s a faulty premise. Just because an entrepreneur
minimizes his or her downside, he doesn’t render his risk meaningless."

So she's saying that Gladwell should have said "minimized risk" instead of
"[about taking risks] they do no such thing".

"What he never acknowledges is that most entrepreneurs fail, whether they are
zany or calculating, and whether or not they are prepared for the challenges
of creating a new business."

She doesn't acknowledge this because that wasn't the point of the article.
Entrepreneurs who take less risk are generally more successful, of course many
(maybe even most) fail anyway, that doesn't change the fact that you are more
successful if you take less risk.

This article seems more like a summary and not an actual argument for why
"Malcolm Gladwell Must Be Stopped" or why "He’s also a purveyor of garbage".

Edit: he = she

~~~
pvg
'What she meant'. Post is written by a Constance Loizos.
<http://www.constanceloizos.com/>

~~~
ique
Oh, excuse me, fixed it right away.

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adg
I didn't read the Gladwell article, but it sounds like he's a victim of
hindsight bias [0]. It's easy to think that there was less risk involved when
reflecting back on someone's decisions _after they succeeded_.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias>

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jpwagner
True Gladwell writes garbage that sells itself, but isn't this article
attempting to do the same thing?

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jonmc12
There are different classes of entrepreneur that run the gambit of risk
profile. An entrepreneur can be an investor who puts a deal together, a soccer
mom who opens a flower shop, a software developer trying to change the world,
etc, etc.

I can't read the full Gladwell article (only the abstract), but its not clear
to me that Gladwell was trying to address all classes of entrepreneurs.
However, if he is saying that predatory, risk-averse behavior is how one class
of entrepreneurs (or some classes of entrepreneurs) have made most money /
success on average - I think this is a reasonable thesis.

Anyhow, its a fuzzy rebuttal to an unclear thesis, but my takeaway is that
there are plenty of people taking huge risks under the label of entrepreneur,
succeeding, and setting good examples for the rest of us. Will 'predators'
exist and continue to thrive? Sure. But that does not mean its the only way an
entrepreneur can approach an opportunity.

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jcnnghm
While reading Gladwell's book Outliers I got the distinct impression that you
could effectively argue against his thesis, that successful people are only
successful because of their circumstance, without changing many words in his
book. What Gladwell fails to understand is that what makes a person an outlier
isn't that they happen to have expended energy getting good at something that
people want, it's that they took the time and effort to get good at something
to begin with. What makes a person an outlier is the dedication and motivation
to truly become an expert at something.

For example, in his book Gladwell says that Bill Gates is a victim of
circumstance, and gives examples of that circumstance. One example was that
Gates frequently snuck out of his parent's house in the middle of the night to
ride a public bus to a local college where he worked on an unused computer
terminal. Similarly, Gladwell tells a similar story about Steve Jobs, in which
he looks up Bill Hewlett's number in the telephone book, and calls him to ask
if he can have some spare electronic components to construct something for a
school science project. What makes those two outliers isn't that they had the
opportunity to do those things, it's that they actually did them. In both
cases, they created an opportunity for themselves, then seized the
opportunity. They didn't just created one opportunity, however, they created
and took advantage of hundreds of opportunities, each time further leveraging
their cumulative advantage. If it was truly just circumstance, then everyone
living within bus distance to a college with an unused computer, and everyone
with a telephone and a phone book should have founded Microsofts and Apples.

~~~
ique
Your second paragraph here is exactly how I interpreted the book. They are not
Outliers and special in any way, they are merely successful because they had
the stamina to put in the 10,000 hours he talks about.

The entire point of the 10k hour rule is that anyone can become an expert and
be successful if they just stick with it and do what it takes. That's the
reason there are no true Outliers.

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statictype
>The entire point of the 10k hour rule is that anyone can become an expert and
be successful if they just stick with it and do what it takes. That's the
reason there are no true Outliers.

Having that single-minded focus and dedication needed to put in the 10k hours
makes you an outlier.

I think what I actually took away from that theory is that people value innate
talent as a premium and hard work as a commodity - something anyone can do if
they just put their mind to it. But I think it's really the _hard work_ that
separates the really successful from everyone else, not the talent.

~~~
ique
>Having that single-minded focus and dedication needed to put in the 10k hours
makes you an outlier.

Then doesn't that in a sense make it the talent you're talking about?

I think we're just splitting hairs here, I'm pretty sure I mean the same thing
as you :)

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rubyrescue
David Cowan captures it better here
[http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2009/11/gladwells-
igon...](http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2009/11/gladwells-igon-value-
problem.html)

