Malcolm Gladwell Explains Why Human Potential Is Being Squandered

Highlights from a PopTech Talk by Sociologist Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Outliers: The Story of Success."

"When we observe differences in how individuals succeed in the world our initial thought is always to say, to argue that that is the result of some kind of innate difference in ability.

And when we look at the different rates that groups succeed we think that that reflects some underlying innate trait in the characteristics of that group. And that is wrong... what capitalization rates say... is there's another explanation and that has to do with poverty, with stupidity, and with culture."

"We have a scarcity of achievement... not because we have a scarcity of talent. We have a scarcity of achievement because we're squandering our talent. And that's not bad news that's good news; because it says that this scarcity is not something we have to live with. It's something we can do something about."

Watch full talk at PopTech [19 min.]:
http://poptech.org/popcasts/malcolm_gladwell_human_potential

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• Malcolm Gladwell
• human potential
• PopTech
• Outliers: The Story of Success