TDS Time Machine | Conversations with Authors - Pt. 2
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What business software solutions does Odoo offer?
This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up, and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on features you need. Check out Odoo at odoo.com. That's odoo.com. Luotonantaja, Resursspank AB, Suomen Sivuliike.
A best-selling author, my guest tonight, his new book is called David and Goliath, Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. Please welcome to the program Malcolm Gladwell.
The book is called David and Goliath. Basically, the premise being sometimes being David is a very positive thing, is that you can use those to your advantage. Is that the desirable adversity, I guess?
Desirable difficulties is the phrase that I use in the book.
What is the premise of Malcolm Gladwell's book 'David and Goliath'?
Yeah, it's an examination of underdogs and their strategies, and also generally of the idea... The book really asks the question about whether we have an accurate understanding of what an advantage is. Right. Because lots of things that seem like disadvantages can be actually highly advantageous, and that's sort of the theme that runs through a lot of the chapters.
In the book, things like dyslexia or having a crappy childhood.
Yes. I have a... You know, dyslexia is a great example of this, that many people with dyslexia suffer, and it's a real obstacle to getting ahead in life. But at the same time, there's a... If you look at groups of very successful entrepreneurs or professionals, you will find a much greater than expected number of dyslexics in their ranks. So the number of... incredibly successful entrepreneurs over the last 25 or 30 years who are dyslexic. Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, the guy who runs Cisco, John Chambers. I mean, I could go on and on.
And what you... What happens when you... Because if it was just four, that wouldn't be very good.
There's significantly more. All right, good. And when you talk to them, it's really fascinating.
How can disadvantages become advantages according to Gladwell?
What they'll tell you is that they didn't succeed in spite of their dyslexia, but because of it. That being forced to cope with a highly problematic childhood where they couldn't do the thing they're required to do, which is read. forced them to learn all kinds of strategies that ended up being more important.
But there must be some kind of, like, laugher curve with this, like with supply-side economics, where it gets to a certain point where a certain, if I may use a phrase I learned in a different book, tipping point of... of a tipping point of disadvantages that bury you, like bad childhood and dyslexia. And dyslexia. And no mouth. You know, or, like... Or you say, like, then you put Helen Keller up there. Like, but...
I use that phrase, desirable difficulty, which is a lovely phrase that these two psychologists at UCLA have come up with, to distinguish between the kinds of difficulties that can prove advantageous and undesirable difficulties, which are not the kind of thing that anyone should be expected to recover from or compensate for.
Yet I'm sure some people do. The human spirit is incredibly adaptable and sometimes does that. But isn't in... Don't we all have, to some extent, disadvantages that shape our character as we go through? And it is sort of the tenacity with which you overcome them, no matter what that would be.
What role does dyslexia play in the success of entrepreneurs?
I mean, I got started on this book because in my last book, Outliers, when I was spending a lot of time talking to very successful people, and I was always struck by how often when they accounted for what they had achieved, they began with the difficulties, not with the... obvious advantages. And so much of their sense of themselves was something that grew out of some... In some cases, it was some terrible blow that had happened to them that they had managed somehow to navigate. So there's a chapter here on parental loss. And on this striking fact that
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What business software solutions does Odoo offer?
0:00–2:00
2
What is the premise of Malcolm Gladwell's book 'David and Goliath'?
2:00–3:09
3
How can disadvantages become advantages according to Gladwell?
3:09–4:32
4
What role does dyslexia play in the success of entrepreneurs?
4:32–5:43
5
What is the significance of parental loss among leaders?
5:43–6:36
6
How does Gladwell define 'desirable difficulties'?
6:36–7:12
7
What insights does Mary Roach provide about digestion in her book 'Gulp'?
7:12–8:19
8
How does high-frequency trading affect the stock market?
8:19–52:20
Speakers
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