Tipping Point Blog Post 4

This week in Tipping Point Gladwell talks about how lifestyle, background, and culture influence the success of an individual.  He uses Jewish immigrants from the turn of the century as his prime examples.  These immigrants, he explains, came to the country with nothing except a little bit of know-how in the clothing industry.  Through hard work and sacrifice, they achieve a modicum of   success, and were able to give their children an education.  These men and women who sacrificed everything when coming to the new world are not Gladwell's focus, however.  Its those they sacrificed everything for who he believes are the key to understanding success.  He explains that these children grew up watching their parents sweat and toil to put dinner on the table, and thus they adopted this determination and applied it to their educations (which their parents had not obtained).  This hard work combined with the declining birth rate during the depression (less competition to get into schools) got them into good colleges.  When few firms were hiring jewish lawyers, they started their own and took cases that were deemed unfit for "whit-shoe" firms (such as corporate takeovers) which eventually uber profitable.  It seemed to me that these lawyers were not so much skilled as they were lucky.  The only reason they were able to take the (unforeseen) lucrative hostile corporate takeover cases was that no one else wanted them, and not because they were incredibly good at their jobs.  It is an interesting case of people casting a product or idea away as unfit for high brow society, but later accepting it when it becomes trendy.  The first thing it made me think about was ripped jeans.  Twenty years ago, if your jeans had holes in them, you threw them out and bought new ones.  It was a simpler time.  Now, however, you can pay $200 and companies will save you the trouble and rip them for you before you ever put them on.  The jeans themselves didn't get better at being jeans, but society evolved (devolved?) to a place where a certain style became trendy or exciting, much like corporate takeovers.