A Single Black Swan

Gladwell focuses on one person's unique investment strategy in this chapter. While it is easy to be overwhelmed by all of the stock market terms and seemingly meaningless numbers that are spouted off in the next 25 pages, if you pay close enough attention, Gladwell brings light to an investment strategy that is perfectly illogical, but at the same time the most reliable. Nassim Taleb bases the finances of his company off of the inevitability of disaster. As stated in the book, if the market followed a smooth bell curve, then statistically, a disaster would happen around every 7,000 years. Sadly, we all know this to be false as a major downfall in the market happens every 3-4 years. Taleb relies on this downfall every 3-4 years because, while other investors lose a considerable amount of money (as expected) in a financial crisis, Taleb makes it rich. “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion," says Taleb. Gladwell possesses the ability to portray a man of seemingly insane decisions, as one who has the genius to make millions. This type of writing is a talent in itself.

My Thoughts on Gladwell's Thoughts on Ketchup

Going into What the Dog Saw, I had heard of the infamous rant on ketchup. Fellow students questioned sanity, as well as family members that had also read the book before me. The beginning of the chapter starts with a tangent about mustard, and it is then that I realized that Gladwell does actually have a very valid point. There are wide varieties of mustard, including Grey Poupon, a brand in which its advertising associated it with luxury and "the finer things in life." After a string of advertisements full of Rolls Royce cars and lavishly dressed business men aired for Grey Poupon, its sales broke records across the country. Howard Moskowitz, taking notice of the mustard brand's success started to question the monopoly of Heinz ketchup. Moskowitz owned a large food testing and market research business. After a series of testing, unlike mustard, Moskowitz found that no brand of "fancy ketchup" would appeal to a large enough audience for it to gain a significant piece of the ketchup monopoly. Moskowitz realizes that instead of looking for a product that will satisfy all consumers everywhere, companies should be focused on providing a variation of different products to more effectively car for consumers' needs. Gladwell calls this his "theory of variation;" it is unrealistic to expect one product to satisfy nearly every consumer, therefore variation is required. Moskowitz shared his findings to help shape the market for spaghetti sauce with companies like Ragu. This chapter was particularly interesting because theories of variation are most often applied to investments, not ketchup. Definitely a new perspective on how I dress my hotdog.

Chicken Cooking and Product Pitching

The first of many "stories," as Gladwell calls them, introduces readers to a man named Ron Popeil and his "conquest of the American kitchen." Ron Popeil is the son of S.J. Popeil, who served as an intern and nephew to the late Nathan Morris, a pitchman with his own small company. S.J., inspired by his uncle, went on to form the Popeil Brothers company who brought mid 60's America a wide array of kitchen gadgets including the Chop-O-Matic and the Veg-O-Matic. Gladwell goes on to tell the story of Ron and his less than ideal childhood that lead up to his ground breaking career as a pitchman for his father's company. Gladwell's unique way of making the character of the story (in this case Ron) seem like the author himself provided a means of emphasis on one of Ron's most important breakthroughs in his pitching career: TV allowed you to to do more effectively than the best pitchman did in live demonstrations; it allowed the pitchman to make the product the star. Gladwell's portrayal of a long standing friendship with Popeil  makes the reader feel even more emotionally involved when Ron, while pitching his very own rotisserie chicken in-home oven, hit over 1 million dollars in sales in just the first hour of his infomercial. Never did I think going into this book would I be inspired by a 1 AM infomercial as well as an in-home rotisserie chicken oven invented by a man named Ron. That alone shows Gladwell's talent for taking the ordinary and transforming it into a symbol of revolutionary thinking.

What the Reader Saw

When I first entered the world of What the Dog Saw written by staff writer of The New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell, I expected nothing more than observations. Famous observations on the ketchup industry and Ceaser Milan's famous "dog whisperer" reputation, but simply observations none the less. Instead, within 15 pages of the novel, I was bombarded with names like Ron Popeil and his revolutionary yet simple household rotisserie chicken oven, and Nassim Taleb, a man who took disaster and made the inevitable an investment strategy that took his company to the moon, and back again. Gladwell's unique perspective paired with his seemingly personal relationship with all the characters involved throughout the book provided an experience for the reader as if they to, could now start a rotisserie chicken business, or dye their hair a shade blonder in support of the feminist movement. This book, a reading I now recommend to anyone particularly interested in things of the ordinary made extraordinary, is one that never failed to leave me wondering 'have I been choosing the wrong type of spaghetti sauce my entire 16 years on this earth?' High expectations so far.