Success is terrifyingly contingent; intrinsic qualities are required but a lot of things also need to break just right---along with some luck of being at the right place at the right time.
Back in October 1971, an engineer (who I knew when we both went to a small high school in Upstate New York during the late 1950s) named Ray Tomlinson chose the '@' symbol for email addresses and wrote software to send the first network email. At the time, it must not have seemed very important because Ray didn't bother to save that first message or even record the exact date. Ray Tomlinson has been called the father of email because he invented the software that allowed messages to be sent between computers. Ray made it possible to swap messages between machines in different locations; between universities, across continents, and oceans. At the time, he was working for Boston-based Bolt, Beranek and Newman, which was helping to develop ARPAnet, the forerunner of the modern Internet.
Malcolm Gladwell asserts in his engaging new book "Outliers" that success seems to stem as much from context as from personal attributes. Intrinsic ability appears to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for exceptional achievement. Of course, the elements of success are not all matters of happenstance and talent: hard work is essential, too.
While I was working in Metro Seattle in the late 1960s, Bill Gates, who born in 1955, was fortunate to attend Lakeside, a private school in Seattle with its own computer. The Lakeside machine, installed in 1968, was one of a new generation of computers that remotely shared processing power with a large mainframe computer on a time share basis. That meant Gates could learn programming without being slowed by the laborious punch-card process then used to set up the larger machines. Gates and his friends at school were drawn to the computer, which he said was kept, "in a funny little room that we subsequently took control of." The result was Gates had thousands of hours of programming under his belt when the first do-it-yourself computer kit was introduced in 1975--making him perfectly prepared to take maximum advantage of the personal computer (PC) revolution.
Nurture over Nature and Attitude over Aptitude
Gladwell in his book passionately emphasizes the need to cultivate great minds that might be limited by their circumstances or environment. "People don't rise from nothing," he writes. "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."
"Outliers" offers an implicit message for companies as well: There is great competititve advantage for the organization recognizing that the work environment can nurture talent--also suppress it. The best companies will not only seek to provide their employees with enrichment but will also have the insight to identify and recruit exceptional though neglected talent that could flourish under the right conditions.
Gladwell's insistence that cultural heritage, timing, persistence, and an eye for the main chance are the determinants of success. It is not the best and the brightest who succeed but those who are given opportunities and have the presence of mind to seize them. "When we misunderstand or ignore the real lessons of success, we squander talent," Gladwell concludes.
Sources: BUSINESSWEEK, December 1, 2008 and The Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2008