BTW, Myhrvold's the ex-CTO of Microsoft who, as incredible as it sounds, missed the whole Internet thing. Were it not for Bill Gates, Microsoft would have been screwed. Imagine that... you're the CTO of the biggest software company in the World and you miss the rise of Internet. Needless to say, his tenure was over after that.
Admittedly off-topic: I find Gladwell over-rated. He picks interesting questions to ask, all right, but he never gets around to answering them. Like: why does the tipping point work? He proposes no hypotheses.
Raising questions of that calibre is a job in itself. I am glad he is not coming up with half-baked hypotheses. This whole thing about 'Not asking questions till you can propose solutions' doesn't cut it for me.
For instance in Blink, he points out that a very successful golf player doesn't even seem to understand the reasons for his success. This has important implications. Do successful people really know why they are successful ? Do we take them a little too seriously ? After all self-improvement is big business.
BTW, Myhrvold's the ex-CTO of Microsoft who, as incredible as it sounds, missed the whole Internet thing. Were it not for Bill Gates, Microsoft would have been screwed. Imagine that... you're the CTO of the biggest software company in the World and you miss the rise of Internet. Needless to say, his tenure was over after that.
Edit: And if you're a fan of Gladwell, you will cringe as you read this: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_...