This book sounds like Gladwell's other two books, not to mention his numerous articles.

I really never think about whether his central claims are right or wrong. I am not sure this could be objectively measured very easily.

Gladwell's writing is interesting. I learn what I learn and put it all in the hopper and try to make a little sense of life, the universe, and everything.

I’ve read both of Gladwell’s previous books and got a lot out of them. They’re rich in storytelling and anecdote and whether you agree with him or not on any given conclusion you still end up with a lot to chew on. I’m sure that this book will be the same and I look forward to reading it as soon as my copy arrives.

But with that said I also have to say that I’m pretty suspicious of anyone siding too heavily one way or another in the nature vs. nurture fight. We seem to be a very complex and convoluted amalgamation of both and I doubt that we will ever be able to draw a line in the sand saying we are this much nurture and that much nature.

From Bayard’s review he seems to be saying that Gladwell is pushing the nurture angle. No doubt, Gladwell will make his case persuasively and with great example to back him up. I just hope that people won’t buy it as gospel and suspend their critical faculties to the point where it blinds them to the other side of the argument.

Darn.

Gladwell is taking a moral stance here. This book is the anti-Bell Curve, in fact. That book claimed, in brief, that IQ was hereditary and doomed you. (The research was interesting, but their interpretation was wildly wrong, and their conclusions even more so, for the record.) Gladwell's book, by contrast, claims that IQ isn't nearly enough, and therefore we should be making a concerted effort to change the way everyone is taught and nurtured -- that it's too simple to write people off without understanding how they got to where they are. He focuses on the wildly successful, but the implication is that we could have vastly more wildly successful people if we focused on the right things.

Indeed, even if The Bell Curve were right and IQ is mostly hereditary, it would still make sense to improve the way we educate and nurture intelligence to maximize everyone's potential. Gladwell underplayed the "nature" part in his book, but by no means ignored it or eliminated it (he refers a number of times to inborn talent as a starting place). Instead, I felt he was dismantling the complexity known as "genius" into its many component parts -- changing it from an untouchable, mysterious gift of the gods into an interaction of many different issues, some of which we can manage as a society.

Indeed, he is in the hope business. You can question his research, but there's no real doubt that we could do better with identifying talent and nurturing it. For that, I applaud his efforts to turn genius from the untouchable into something that we might create in many.

...in our best consultant-speak, we ask: How much value does Malcolm Gladwell really add?

So asks the author, and then sneeringly answers "Not much." Sounding more like a creationist than a journalist, he adds "It's all just a theory". Or words to that effect.

So how much value does Gladwell add?

In one of the businesses I'm involved with, we used some of the ideas in Gladwell's "Blink" to change how we asked customers about what they needed us to fix first. Gladwell's "fee" was whatever amount he got paid from the paperback version of the book.

The results were dramatic, business-changing, and added substantially to the bottom line. It wasn't simply the change of focus that directed us more accurately towards fixing what was really wrong, but the new clarity we got in the process of making that determination as well.

So there you go. Asked and answered, without Bayard's pathetically childish sneering.

It's not surprising that he lionizes Bill Gates. Both of them specialize in making money off shallow presentations of other people's deep ideas, adding nothing original or worthwhile, but raking in tons of cash along the way.

The current financial meltdown does not 'prove' that syncretic thinkers came up with a faulty theory - as Bayard insists at the end of his critical review of Gladwell's glibness.

Short term wealth was seized in sly looting without accountability. The bogus CDO rating 'theories' based on computer models of past default rates were not the result of careful but faulty filtering of ideas - they were rationalizations designed to support astronomical profiteering. (None of the folks who made millions in the past 3 years are suffering now- even in a global recession. Anyone who has $100 million can coast. No faulty theories needed.)

It was the utter absence of concern for catastrophic consequence to innocent bystanders that explains the meltdown. Con artists & crooks do not reflect on theories to protect the general welfare.

The absence of caution by portfolio managers reflects mindlessness, herd mentality or no cohones. They all mostly spout the mantra: Buy right, sit tight. No faulty theories by egg heads in cafes guided them.

Basic neuroscience has proved that experience shapes the developing brain The innate hard-wired potential of the brain is nurtured by stimuli. This is a no-brainer. Gladwell is a bit simplistic. Unfortunately- so was Bayard.

In my field, I am very successful. I attribute my success to an interest in what I do (fascination, really), which results in my being willing to do it over and over--because I like it and it arouses my curiosity. The second factor is that when I was young, I was too naive and even dumb to know how hard it was to become a success in my field, and so I was never intimidated or afraid. It wasn't until I was middle-aged and looking back that my old ambitions made me nervous, and by that time they had been realized. The third factor was luck. You have to stick to it. You have to not be afraid. And you have to get lucky.