Thursday, March 26, 2009

OUTLIERS

Dear Friends,

I am reading the book OUTLIERS written by Malcolm Gladwell. Here is an excerpt from the book that turned like a driller into my head. The head is filled with strong ideas which make us feel that we are great or that we are not so great.
Especially as successful entrepreneurs we need to be always alert to help the budding entrepreneurs. You will know why when you read this excerpt.

Malcolm Gladwell says "I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing. We do owe to something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.

Biologists often talk about the "ecology" of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warned them, the soil in which they put down the roots and the rabbits and lunberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?"

Hope the positive side of every entrepreneur is kindled.

1 comment:

  1. Wonderful excerpt, certainly drills a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing

    -Raghu
    http://lessonsinentrepreneurship.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete

Explore India

google maps gazetteer