Well, there is a glitch (a few of them really) in this review... Gladwell does NOT say that you need luck and persistence instead of being a genius to become an outlier... what he DOES say is that you need ALL: luck (opportunity, means, social environment), persistence (time, work, practice) *AND* genius. You can substitute one of them with the others up to a certain point, but you need at least a certain amount of the three. Likening IQ to height in basketball players, if you are much less than 5ft tall, no amount of practice and good coordination will make you a world-class player.
What Gladwell says about the software pioneers is that all of them were born at the right moment and also had the luck to enjoy access to almost unlimited computer time when very few people had it, but that is just ONE THIRD; they also needed to work really really hard and also have the right combination of analytic genius and social skills. Many other people had the access time and perfect age but did not become software millionaires.
The chapter about Bill Langen deals precisely to that: you can have an off-the-limit high IQ and do not accomplish anything meaningful if you lack the opportunity or background to exercise that over-the-top capacity.
BTW, what perspires a little in the book (just my opinion...) is that in some cases (like bill gates or mozart), contrary to popular perception, were cases of LESS genius and more work and opportunity (although with a great amount of genius nevertheless) compared to other outliers.
