Information On Demand 2009 Global Conference Website

Malcolm Gladwell
Best-selling author of Outliers, Blink and The Tipping Point

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, in 2005, Time Magazine named Malcolm one of its 100 Most Influential People.

• Follow Malcolm's blog
• Read Malcolm's New Yorker articles
• Gladwell interview on the Early Show
• Listen to sound byte (MP3, 915KB)
• Read the transcript (8KB)

Malcolm's most recent book promises to have an even greater impact on both business and society than his first two books. 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. In Blink 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. Now in his stunning new book Outliers, the bestselling author reveals the real—and mostly overlooked—secrets to extraordinary success. He reveals that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Gladwell explains what Bill Gates, the Beatles and other world-class successes have in common, how culture affects their careers and performance. Along the way, Gladwell overturns many of our conventional notions about what makes a person successful. He creates an entirely new model for nurturing success and suggests ways to give people the best opportunities to succeed. Because we so profoundly personalize success, we squander human potential. We miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. Malcolm is a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. 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. He was previously a reporter for the Washington Post.

"Gladwell and his ideas have reached a tipping point of their own."
~ Fast Company