Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book a few years ago called, Outliers: The Story of Success, which is, in his words, about “men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.”  In the book, he looks at a wide variety of people and occupations, from airline pilots to entrepreneurs to hockey players to software engineers, and identifies and examines the attributes of success.  Beyond talent and intelligence and ability, many of the characteristics of success include things largely outside of our control, things like “culture and community and family and generation.”

continue reading