I do think that Gladwell is being hypocritical here. The people who wrote the survey in the first place were doing a study to find things in common among succe

I do think that Gladwell is being hypocritical here. The people who wrote the survey in the first place were doing a study to find things in common among successful companies. He identifies things that have made individual organisations successful in some places, and then generalizes to say that this falsifies the argument that recruiting the best talent isn't important for all organisations. This is in fact he opposite of the methodology he advocates in 'outliers' - where he suggests that you should look for things in common between successful organisations.