From Chapter 13 “Efficiency” in Ingredients of Outliers. How Sweet it Is The concept of “efficiency” certainly isn’t new. There’s another giant company where efficiency is a primary goal, a company that’s been around quite a bit longer than Amazon. In fact, the seeds that grew to become Mars, Incorporated were planted in the late nineteenth century in the kitchen of a home in Hancock, Minnesota. It was there that Alva Mars began teaching her young son, Franklin, how to hand-dip candy. Franklin, who became better known as Frank, proved to be a good student and, in 1902, when he was … [Read more...]
Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life
From Chapter 11 “Perspective” in Ingredients of Outliers. Life is simply about perspective. If ranked, this is the most important of all the lessons I’ve learned. Simply changing your perspective changes everything. For example, I recently had a patient who was in moderate respiratory distress from the pulmonary embolism we diagnosed in the emergency department. He was also dying of colon cancer. When I told him about this latest diagnosis, he said, “Whew, at least I’m still on the right side of the turf.” For most of us—me included—the thought of a pulmonary embolism would be … [Read more...]
Learning from Failure
From Chapter 2 "Fail Fast: The Gift of Failure" in Ingredients of Outliers Going into Business[es] With my newly discovered burst of self-confidence, I decided to launch my business career. But where to start? I’d once entertained thoughts of owning a restaurant. I knew nothing about restaurant operations, so I thought it would be less risky to start out with hot dog stands. I bought five of them, and in the winter in Phoenix, Arizona, they did really well—in the summer, however, not so much. The hot dog stands were a huge failure—but that didn’t stop me. Since then I’ve started, or … [Read more...]