Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born September 3, 1963) is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker.

He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996.

He has published six books: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000); Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005); Outliers: The Story of Success (2008); What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009), a collection of his journalism; and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013).

His first five books were on The New York Times Best Seller list.

His sixth book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, was released in September 2019.

He is also the host of the podcast Revisionist History and co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries. Gladwell's books and articles often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences and make frequent and extended use of academic work, particularly in the areas of sociology, psychology, and social psychology.

Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada on June 30, 2011.

Early life

Gladwell was born in Fareham, Hampshire, England. His mother is Joyce (née Nation) Gladwell, a Jamaican psychotherapist. His father, Graham Gladwell, was a mathematics professor from Kent, England. When he was six his family moved from Southampton to the Mennonite community of Elmira, Ontario, Canada. He has two brothers. Throughout his childhood, Malcolm lived in rural Ontario Mennonite country, where he attended a Mennonite church. Research done by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. revealed that one of Gladwell's maternal ancestors was a Jamaican free woman of colour (mixed black and white) who was a slaveowner. His great-great-great-grandmother was of Igbo ethnicity from Nigeria, West Africa. In the epilogue of his book Outliers he describes many lucky circumstances that came to his family over the course of several generations, contributing to his path towards success. Gladwell has said that his mother is his role model as a writer.

Gladwell's father noted Malcolm was an unusually single-minded and ambitious boy. When Malcolm was 11, his father, who was a professor of mathematics and engineering at the University of Waterloo, allowed him to wander around the offices at his university, which stoked the boy's interest in reading and libraries. The University of Waterloo granted Gladwell an honorary doctorate in 2007. In the spring of 1982, Gladwell interned with the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from Trinity College of the University of Toronto, in 1984.

Personal life

Gladwell is a Christian. His family attended Above Bar Church in Southampton, UK, and later Gale Presbyterian in Elmira when they moved to Canada. His parents and siblings are part of the Mennonite community in Southwestern Ontario. Gladwell wandered away from his Christian roots when he moved to New York, only to rediscover his faith during the writing of David and Goliath and his encounter with Wilma Derksen regarding the death of her child.

Gladwell was a national class runner and an Ontario High School (Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations – OFSAA) champion. He was among Canada's fastest teenagers at 1500 metres, running 4:14 at the age of 13 and 4:05 when aged 14. At university, Gladwell ran 1500 metres in 3:55. In 2014, at the age of 51, he ran a 4:54 at the Fifth Avenue Mile. At 57 he ran a 5:15 mile.

He had his first child, a daughter, in 2022.

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Career

Gladwell's grades were not high enough for graduate school, so he decided to pursue advertising as a career. After being turned down by every advertising company he applied to, he accepted a journalism job at The American Spectator, a liberal magazine in Indiana. He later wrote for Insight on the News, a conservative publication owned by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Gladwell began reporting commerce and science for The Washington Post in 1987, where he served until 1996. "I was a basket case at the start," Gladwell explains in a personal elucidation of the 10,000-hour rule he admired in Outliers, and I felt like an expert at the end." It took ten years—actually that long.»

When Gladwell began at The New Yorker in 1996, he wanted to "mine latest academic findings for knowledge, theories, or inspiration." His first assignment was to write a piece on fashion. Gladwell wrote about a man who made T-shirts for $8 rather than writing about a dress that costs $100,000. You or I could make a dress for $100,000, but making a T-shirt for $8 is much more difficult."

Gladwell earned fame with two New Yorker articles, "The Tipping Point" and "The Coolhunt," both written in 1996. These two pieces will be the basis for Gladwell's first book, The Tipping Point, for which he received a $1 million advance. He continues to write for The New Yorker. Gladwell also served as a contributing editor for Grantland, a sports journalism website launched by former ESPN columnist Bill Simmons.

Gladwell introduced the concept of the "talent myth" that companies and organizations, in his opinion, incorrectly follow in a July 2002 article in The New Yorker. This report explores various managerial and administrative methods used by companies, winners and losers alike. According to him, staff are all too eager to classify workers without thorough track record and therefore make hasty decisions. Many businesses believe indisproportionately rewarding "stars" over others with pay raises and promotions. However, promotions are often inaccurately calculated, putting employees into positions they should not have and preventing other, more experienced employees from rising as a result of the quick rise of inexperienced workers with no in-depth analysis. He also points out that narcissistic personality types are more likely to progress the ladder under this framework because they are more likely to receive more credit for their accomplishments and accept less responsibility for failure. Both narcissists make the worst managers and that the reward system, which "stars," eventually deteriorates a firm's standing. Gladwell states that the most profitable long-term companies are those that reward experience above all else and demand more time for promotions.

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Awards and honours

• 2005 – Time named Gladwell one of its 100 most influential people
• 2007 – American Sociological Association's first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues
• 2007 – honorary degree from University of Waterloo
• 2011 – honorary degree from University of Toronto
• 2011 – Order of Canada, the second highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada