Opportunity is Important to Success
 
“Success is made of 99% effort and 1% luck.” This is a Chinese proverb in which many students believe, but they are oblivious of the fact that “the 1% luck is even more important than that 99% effort.” It is implied by this proverb that, if there is no proper opportunity, no matter how hard you work, it will only be a waste of time. In Outliers, the author, Gladwell, claims that opportunity is an important factor of one’s success. In reality, it is indeed held to some extent true that opportunity is vital to success.
 
To begin with, anyone who has an opportunity is more likely to succeed. For instance, Alibaba, a business empire in the 21st century, was a typical example of how Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, succeeded. He opened the door to e-commerce by taking advantage of the internet technology in the 1990s. Over time, under the increasing influence of the internet, Jack had gained a large amount of the market share. This example testifies that one can best succeed by seizing the moment, corresponding to the hockey example mentioned by Gladwell in Outliers. In this novel, Gladwell argued that, whether hockey players could enter the team was determined solely by their birthdays. This is similar to the case of Jack Ma. The date of Jack’s birth promoted his business empire. In other words, if Jack were born in the present, he would not be able to succeed in that way. Therefore, to certain degree, the chances of anyone to succeed is influenced by when he is born and what kind of opportunities he happens to be able to get.
 
In the novel, the author claims that those who do not have any advantage at the starting line will catch up later and finish with a big success. This kind of success is the result of the cumulative effect. Gladwell argues a snowball effect. Hockey players who only performed slightly better than their peer players in the phase of physical examination made a big difference later, because where there were better athletes, there were better coaches, better supporting sports facilities, and better chances to enter a better team. Hence, any individual who manifested more strengths and power than others would have a higher likelihood to stand out and succeed. Similar view can be traced through many examples in history. In the 1930s, the United States was experiencing the Great Depression, and the unemployment rate was rising at an alarming rate. The only remaining jobs were offered to white people only. Although those jobs were simple and did not require too many techniques. Even though some Black people could even do better than the Whites, the jobs were still first allocated to white people. It turned out that the unemployed rate of the Blacks was twice as that of the Whites. Back then, White people were considered to be superior to Black people due to the strong racial discrimination. This gap of advantage was indeed starting to widen as more White people owned a job during the severe economic crisis. Therefore, Black people were less likely to succeed than White people at that time due to the lack of financial support from their jobs.
 
In conclusion, Gladwell argues that opportunity is a key component of success. He uses logically persuasive examples to prove his view which coincides with the reality.
 
Citation：Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers.