She might have simply staked her future hopes on a subject she wasn't cut out for, switched her field of study, and graduated without the benefit of an Ivy League reputation. In the case of Caroline Sacks, for example, there's no way to prove that she would still be in science had she attended a less prestigious university. Yet they also radically oversimplify the issue. In a collection of essays, Malcolm Gladwell explores the relationship between power and prestige on the one hand and weakness and struggle on the other. Gladwell's claims are striking and, as he frames them, compelling. 'Rarely do we stop and consider,' he writes, 'whether the most prestigious of institutions is always in our best interest.' In academia particularly, he says, 'The Big Pond takes really bright students and demoralizes them.' If you're a programmer, for example, is it better to take a chance on a small startup or to take that job with Google? Should aspiring bankers aim for Goldman Sachs or start at a boutique municipal bond company?īased on his logic in ' David and Goliath,' Gladwell's answer would almost definitely be to go small. Gladwell focuses his analysis on higher education, but his claims have obvious implications for career as well. Better to have gone to a non-elite institution, he says - to have been a big fish in a little pond - than have had your dreams and confidence crushed. But Harvard students compare themselves to their Harvard peers, and that's bound to make those in the bottom third feel stupid and unsuccessful. The worst STEM students at Harvard, he claims, may be as smart as the top third at a lower ranked college. In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwellchallenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks. Gladwell chalks this up to relative deprivation. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. In the tradition of Gladwells previous best-sellers - The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw - David and Goliath draws upon history, psychology, and powerful storytelling to.

David and goliath by malcolm gladwell