How Outsiders Become Game Changers

Coco Chanel, Steve Jobs, and Katalin Karikó were outsiders who defied the odds and produced revolutionary innovations. How do such outsiders succeed when so many others fail? The authors’ research uncovered four factors: (1) The outsiders were not outliers; they belonged to the system but hadn’t lost touch with its fringes. (2) An outsider had at least one insider who was willing to vouch for his or her ideas or abilities. (3) Outsiders leveraged “fracture points” — such as the death of a major gatekeeper. (4) Instead of just viewing their innovation as a technical challenge, they see it as a marketing challenge.