Malcolm Gladwell is touring the UK to mark the publication of his new book, What The Dog Saw (2009) and last Monday I attended his Oxford show to witness first hand his extraordinary entertaining alchemy of story-telling and intuitive thinking.
A staff writer with the New Yorker magazine since 1996 Gladwell was in 2005 named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. He is also the author of four books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Outliers: The Story of Success (2008) and most recently What The Dog Saw (2009) all of which were number one New York Times bestsellers.
In the ‘show’ I attended ( …why is an author reading one of his excerpts called a show? Seems like the wrong word… ) Gladwell spoke of serendipity. Or more accurately the role that serendipity plays in discovery. In his talk Gladwell used the scientific process of drug discovery as the primary example of serendipity.
But Gladwell wasn’t really just speaking about drug companies and drug discovery; he was more importantly, revealing the people with incredible ideas and determination that work within them. Focusing on the personal risks that these people take, driven by their passionate need to drive clinical knowledge forward in order to make a difference. He explained that in the world of cancer research, there is something called a Kaplan-Meier curve, which tracks the survival of patients in the trial of an experimental drug and how unfortunately it is very rare for this curve to reveal positive results.
Malcolm told us a true story of two of his friends working on anti-cancer drugs. Safi Bahcall, the C.E.O. of Synta Pharmaceuticals, a small biotechnology company located outside Boston and Bahcall’s partner, a cell biologist named Lan Bo Chen. So I guess I shouldn’t give the whole story away… but it was a story of the drug-screening process Chen went through to discover the cancer drug elesclomol by embracing Galilean Serendipity.
Gladwell illustrated his points by explaining there are three different levels of serendipity:
Columbian Serendipity – making a new discovery through pure dumb luck. Example: Columbus was confused between Italian and Arabic miles and found the country by mistake. He wasn’t looking for it, but he found it.
Archimedean Serendipity – knowing what you want to find, but finding it in an unexpected place. Example: Archimedes got into a bath and solved how to measure non-standard solids. He was trying to solve this problem, but he wasn’t looking to solve it in the bath
Galilean Serendipity – building a new tool or creating a new process and discovering something unexpected and new through its use. Example: He went out looking for suprises with his telescope – he didn’t know what he was going to find.
The New York Times declares Gladwell as ‘the master of playful yet profound insight. His ability to see underneath the surface of the seemingly mundane taps into a fundamental human impulse: curiosity.’
While Gladwell’s detractors often point to – what they see as plagiarism in his writing: the uncredited borrowing of existing scientific research, now sometimes referred to as ‘Gladwellian’ theories. But Gladwell describes much of his writing as “playful, intellectual explorations” of ideas. Gladwell expands on this saying “I spend my time talking to people who tell me things, and then I write them down,” he says. “I’m necessarily parasitic in a way…. I have done well as a parasite,” he goes on. “But I’m still a parasite.”
In a recent New York Times interview writer Jason Zengerle questioned this ‘borrowing’ and revealed Gladwell is ‘…the first to acknowledge, his writing largely consists of taking the work of academics and translating it in a way that makes it understandable—and entertaining—to a lay audience.’ But that ‘most academics whose work Gladwell uses are just grateful for the recognition.’ And that ‘…other writers strive to emulate the genre he essentially pioneered—the idea-driven narrative that upends the way we think about everything from cigarettes to ketchup.’ Gladwell himself describes his job is “…to be this intermediary between the academic world and the public.”
Gladwell’s earlier books were also sometimes criticised for their cutesy yet powerful buzzwords (for example ‘mavens, connectors and salesmen‘) and led the New York Times to call him the “Dale Carnegie … of the iPod generation.”
However, this criticism overlooks his greatest gift not for ideas, but for captivating stories. As Gladwell isn’t just selling theories; he is a captivatingly skilful storyteller. When watching Gladwell live its obvious he loves to perform. His conversational style is easy to listen to and while not theatrical as such he does seem to enjoy tormenting the audience as he carefully controls the pace and delivery of his words, often pausing for effect, leaving the rapt audience in suspense – hanging – off – every – single – word. It’s with his public speaking, that Gladwell he’s found a way to monetize his skills. He often appears alongside other highly paid social commentators, for example Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Seth Godin and even Chris Anderson.
While Gladwell does obviously take some creative licence in these antidotes, I admire the way he makes us as readers really think, and re-think the topics he is discussing. So if your looking for thought provoking observation and discussion on cultural trends, he is the man you should be reading. And if you get the opportunity to watch him live I would absolutely recommend it – just beware his theories are all the more convincing in person as he is a first class public speaker.
Read the more of Gladwell’s articles at The New Yorker or on his website and check out a review of Gladwell’s latest book, What the Dog Saw via The New York Times.
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