Persistence needed more than genius

At the recent New Yorker conference, called “2012: Stories from the near Future” was a piece by Malcolm Gladwell on two ideas of Genius. The video link is here—but check the size—it is 27 minutes long.



Gladwell has a wonderful story telling style, as you will know if you've checked his books (Tipping Point, Blink) or his video presentation on Spaghetti Sauce at TED.

This story is about the differences between work methods used by Michael Ventris in solving the Linear B code from the ancient Mycenean writing in 1953 and Andrew Wiles who solved Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1994.


Sidebar: Incidentally, Gladwell quotes Paul Erdos as saying that ‘a mathematician, is a machine for turning coffee into theorems’” in his wonderful essay on the rise of java man. Did you also know that Malcolm Gladwell was a history graduate which could be perfect training for his writing and speeches, and other amazing roles as suggested by Ion Valiskakis in “The Return of History”

Daniel W. Rasmus has elegantly summarised the arguments for and against Gladwells thesis that Ventris represented the “lone genius” while Andrew Wiles had 13 helpers—my paraphrasing. In other words, that modern genius was more about collaboration and focus than the archetype eureka moment. ( Note: Rasmus points out that Ventris had help from Kober and Chadwick so he wasn't entirely isolated in his quest.)


Gladwell speculates that:

  1. persistence is more important than genius for modern problems and,
  2. that we need more people who are will to do the 10,000 hours needed to master a subject,
  3. and more of those people need to capitalise on their human potential. 

Gladwell’s rough calculation was that 10,000 hrs equates to ten years—however my calculation is that five years would do it if you were lucky enough to work the equivalent of a standard work week on your specialist subject. So for Gladwell 10,000 hours of time represents some kind of threshold of advanced competency that Wiles was able to achieve.




He goes on to suggest that:



Rasmus also notes the rise of the amateur professional as represented in part by Ventris and this is also the topic of a presentation by Charles Leadbeater @TED (see below) This idea of the amateur professional is also supported by Charles Leadbeater in a TED talk called “The rise of the amateur professional” see the 19-minute video on TED.

“Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can’t.” ... and he makes the point that the mountain bike industry came from professional amateurs who reinvented the cycling sector to the point that 65% of it is mountain bike related innovation. (ultimate mtn bike here)




The idea of capitalisation which Gladwell highlights is also very useful. Capitalisation is the concept that all 6'10" tall males—have probably tried out for basketball where they might be a natural; but we don’t do that for other advantages like education, as a rule (at least to the same extent.)

