Biography
Malcolm Gladwell has an incomparable gift for interpreting new ideas in the social sciences and making them understandable, practical and valuable to business and general audiences alike.
He’s become so successful at this that he was voted one of HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers - International 2011. This honor recognizes the practitioners and thinkers who have had the greatest influence in the field of people strategy. Newsweek chose him for the Top 10 New Thought Leaders of the Decade. Previously, TIME Magazine named Malcolm one of its 100 Most Influential People of 2005. He was chosen for Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers 2010 and 2009 list and is ranked number ten on The Thinkers 50 2011.
Malcolm has a new book coming out Oct. 1, 2013 called David And Goliath, in which he explores the concept of the underdog. What makes for a successful underdog? And why are underdogs so successful? David and Goliath has all the hallmarks of a classic Gladwell book: arresting, thought-provoking examples, insightful analysis, and a ground-breaking new perspective on something all around us.
Malcolm's book Outliers: The Story of Success is having an even greater impact than his first two books, generating lively debates about the causes of success in fields from education and music to sports and business. In Outliers, Malcolm suggests exciting new approaches to helping people succeed by leveraging the real factors that foster success. Outliers debuted as a #1 bestseller for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, Barnes & Noble, and Publisher's Weekly.
He is the author of two other New York Times #1 bestsellers — The Tipping Point and Blink.
With his first book, Malcolm embedded the concept of the tipping point in our everyday vocabulary and gave organizations new tools for understanding how trends work. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference spent over 400 weeks on the The New York Times bestseller list.
In Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking, he analyzed first impressions — the snap judgments that we all make unconsciously and instinctively — and he explores how we can master this important aspect of successful decision-making.
Malcolm is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His editor describes his work as a new genre of story: an idea-driven narrative that’s focused on the everyday and combines research with material that’s more personal, social and historical. Malcolm has put together a collection of his best writing for his new book, What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. He was previously a reporter for The Washington Post.
Malcolm is an extraordinary speaker: always on target, aware of the context and the concerns of the audience, informative and practical, poised, eloquent and delightfully warm and funny. He has an unsurpassed ability to entertain you and challenge your perspective at the same time.
Credentials
- Staff writer for The New Yorker
- Author, The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw
- Member of the Order of Canada
- Honorary doctorate of letters, University of Toronto
- Former science and medicine writer for The Washington Post
Winner, National Magazine Award
Reviews
A consulting group:
I rate Malcolm as one of our top dinner speakers. He drew on interesting topics (hierarchy vs networks) and did an excellent job integrating [...] highlights on millennial into his speech. It was obvious he listened to our needs. Personally, I am a respected fan of Malcolm and meeting him made me admire him even more. He was pretty relaxed, absolutely down to earth, witty, intelligent and seemed like an all-around nice guy. I’m looking forward to his next book!
A major food company:
Malcolm — Outstanding! Our folds have been raving about your presentation at our National Sales Meeting all week. You did a terrific job of bringing our theme of Creating Separation to life. This is the third time I have had the privilege of having you speak and it is always a treat.
A town-hall event where Adam Gopnik and Malcolm Gladwell spoke for 25 minutes each and then a Q&A on the subject of the internet, politics and social media:
They were the best of the season, awesome, incredible...the audience was laughing, ooohing and ahhhing.
They got a huge response from the morning audience (who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat!).
They also loved the format of the program and both of you were in sync.
They were both 'on fire' for the evening event.
A global fitness trade association:
Malcolm was extremely well received and many of our attendees indicated he was the best we’ve ever had, which is a huge compliment considering we’ve been lucky enough to have had President Clinton, Marcus Buckingham, Kjell Nordstrom, Colin Powell and other highly respected individuals speak at our convention. Thanks again!
A business information company:
Malcolm was "the most awesome speaker we have had in a while", I couldn't be more pleased. Everyone loved, loved him! We had 350 people in his presentation and I hope to have him again sometime. He was so nice and personable too!
A major event for association executives:
Blew them away!!! He was energetic, positive and fabulous! You have a scale - he blew past it. Next year's event is leading towards thought leaders.
A Director of Education and Conferences, for a state-wide public sector association:
Dear Malcolm,
In all my years of producing conferences, I have never had a keynoter be so much on target, be so aware of the context and the concerns of the audience, and be so nice to work with as you were this week.
Our people will be talking about your presentation for years. Not merely were you very informative in a practical way, you did it with such delightful humor. Even more importantly, you set the stage perfectly for the "rally" session that followed. In that forum, numerous members who addressed the group referred to points you made and terms you used.
Malcolm, again thank you so much for joining us and being so responsive to our needs. It was a pleasure and honor to work with you.
An annual Senior Executive meeting for a major hospitality & travel firm:
Dear Leigh Bureau,
In one word?? Amazing!!!!
I told Malcolm right after he finished that he made my career—and I was right! They've already asked me to design next year's meeting agenda and hire the speaker!
I had so many compliments from people who are usually very cynical about corporate meetings and events. You wouldn't even believe it! I can't wait to see the evaluation results!
Thanks again!!! He was a hit.
A university dean's dinner:
Malcolm was wonderful on Saturday, he won us over from the beginning, and he did a great job tailoring his presentation to the legal audience. He was also terrific about fielding questions from the larger audience as well as one-on-one. Thanks so much for facilitating Malcolm's appearance with us.
A major glass company:
Dear Malcolm — I want to thank you again for your participation in our recent management group meeting. My colleagues and I enjoyed the opportunity to meet with you, and you got rave reviews from our member.
Your thoughtful insights resonated with our global leadership group. I think many of them were surprised at the relevance of your perspective to their own leadership challenges. This is high praise from a group of largely technically oriented, engineering types!
We ask members to give us feedback on speakers, and I wanted you to know that they gave you the highest ranking of any external speaker in the last 7 years – basically as long as we’ve been keeping track of the ratings.
The most repeated comment on your speech was, "thought provoking". Some representative comments…
- "Unique perspective, engaging, thought provoking"
- "Good food for thought. Not America centered, very interesting, excellent analogies."
- "Certainly thought provoking. Great use of non-technical analogies to draw similarities, yet get out of the box."
Thanks for getting our meeting off to a great start. I hope that we meet again in the future.
A major civic association:
He was great, great, great. We could have gone all day. He told me he had fun. I hope we made him comfortable. Our CEO and COO were astounded and I am sure want to do other things with him. He is really fun.
An advertising association:
Gladwell was terrific, so perfect, the board members thought that he was the highlight of the conference, he was most impressive and a great storyteller. He took the time to understand and relate it to their group—he did it beautifully. He was simply dynamite. He was funny and engaging and he hit it out of the park.
What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?
In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: *The Tipping Point*; *Blink*; and *Outliers*. Now, in *What the Dog Saw*, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from *The New Yorker* over the same period.
Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.
"Good writing," Gladwell says in his preface, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head." *What the Dog Saw* is yet another example of the buoyant spirit and unflagging curiosity that have made Malcolm Gladwell our most brilliant investigator of the hidden extraordinary.
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" — the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.