Book Club April Edition: Outliers

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This month, I've been rereading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell with a renewed view on how to apply some of the take home messages to better support people coming through our Academy programs and to launching more effective startups through our Ventures incubator.

Gladwell takes a broad view on both successful and unsuccessful people and what advantages, fair or unfair, make the difference in reliably engineering luck; something I think about a lot. There's discussion of the 10,000 hours rule and how obsessive practice is the ultimate differentiator between natural talent and achievement, however most of us don't find the time, desire, or luxury to invest those hours.

Many of Gladwell's lasting sentiments surround the environment needed for success. Gladwell examines outcomes for children from high and low socio-economic background and outlines major differences in upbringing that ultimately may play a large role in the world-view and skillsets of the child.

A hands-on approach termed "concerted cultivation" involves parents heavily structuring their children's time to expose them to different situations, often involving them in clubs and teams, which tends to produce well socialised children, comfortable with many different groups and being outspoken in asking for what they want.

The other style of parenting, known as "accomplishment of natural growth," promotes children to determine how to spend their own time. This hands off approach produces children that are self-dependent sometimes to a fault; reluctant to ask for help and differential to authority figures.

Children raised through "concerted cultivation" tended to be better prepared for higher learning and white-collar jobs, as they've learned from an early age how to behave and be comfortable with different groups of people, whereas the "natural growth" children were less prepared.

On reflection

This made me reflect on my own time as a PhD student, essentially left to my own devices over 4 years working in an optical physics lab (usually with all the lights turned off) in a building where I was the only resident. And how unprepared I felt to make a mark in the world once that time had ended. How many of my first years after the PhD, when I joined Ziylo, were spent finding my place and my voice as I was tasked with talking to customers, investors, partners, and leading the engineering team. And how so much time spent doing these activities was ultimately what gave me the confidence to begin starting companies of my own, like Spin Up Science, where our main activity is to cultivate these capabilities in others.

Absolutely a great read. And definitely something I would recommend revisiting.

By Ben Miles

More recommended reads?

We have a large collection of great titles that have helped throughout our journey to building Spin Up Science. Take a look at our reading list on the resources page.