In the new book Outliers: The Story of Success, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, well known for his top selling tomes The Tipping Point and Blink, doesn’t dispute the role of smarts, talent and drive in making the most extraordinary and successful people stand out from the pack. Instead, the author contends that people underestimate the more overwhelming role of hidden advantage—from family connections to access to resources and special training—in making software billionaires, leading entrepreneurs, and world renowned musicians the very best in their given field.

Gladwell defines “outliers” as “men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary.” And, certainly those profiled are a selection of some of the best, from the Beatles to the last living founder of the leading, large, and well-known law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, and Meagher and Flom. What separates the most successful elite from the hard working and generally talented folk, he says, is the access to special training, opportune periods of time, cultural advantages, and support not given to others. It is the “accumulation of advantages” that empowers the stars amongst us.

Whether he is telling the life stories of the most successful NYC lawyers, dominated by a group of individuals privy to strong schools and related to talented and occupationally adept Jewish immigrant stock, to the bios of Kentucky students unable to shake their tough “culture of honor” when moved to a northern university, Gladwell is telling the story of what role circumstance and upbringing plays in failure and success. Even Gladwell, now the rock star of business book authors, reveals his upbringing and the complicated nature of success, built on one’s cultural legacy, in addition to talent and drive. He notes his mixed ancestry and the privilege that bestowed in his maternal ancestors’ Jamaica, as well as the role of a strong academic education had on his English father and Caribbean mother and the influence on his own life.

With stats (at times), but more often than not, compelling narrative, Gladwell provides the story behind the scenes. Understanding what separates mildly successful, talented and hard working people from the Bill Gateses of the world has long fascinated business execs, academics, entrepreneurs, and investors, alike. For leaders looking to inspire, it’s interesting to note the value of opportunity and access to resources and training that allows the most stellar people profiled to advance to the top of their given profession.

When it comes to Bill Gates, he tracks down the Microsoft founder and offers tidbits about his privileged upbringing, but more importantly, the computer star’s access to computers as an 8th grader in 1968—computers able to do real-time programming in a time of punch card lumbering monsters. The extraordinary access to cutting-edge computing systems and pioneering software developers isn’t lost on Gates, and he even agrees with Gladwell’s assessment of its role in his success.

Also profiled is Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems and the genius behind rewrites of UNIX and Java. Joy is one of those people with a mystique of genius following him. Gladwell doesn’t dispute Joy’s successes and lasting contributions to the programming realm, but he also profiles the opportunities Joy had in honing his craft. As an undergrad entering the University of Michigan in 1971, his aptitude and talent in computing was nurtured at a school known for housing one of the very best computing centers in the world.

It is Gladwell’s way with the softer aspects of social study that may be his best contribution on the nature of success. While some looking for harder evidence may find this irritating, he argues we need to better “appreciate the idea that the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.”

As a way to illustrate his point, Gladwell profiles Chris Langan, once billed in the 1950s as the world’s smartest man with an IQ of 195. But Langan was more than just a fabulous test taker. He had the ability to immediately absorb complicated information, making his time as a student difficult when he easily mastered whatever was taught to him. The sorrowful tale of Langan’s impoverished background and screwy family circumstances, in addition to his lack of “practical intelligence” or charm and savvy to see one’s way through life’s many challenges, lay the building blocks for his inevitable failure in the academic realm—a stunning disappointment given his smarts so far beyond that of all of the faculty teaching him. This lack of practical intelligence, learned at the hip of a caring parent, did doom Langan, the author argues.

Gladwell’s text truly shines when he is able to give us a more complete picture of the person we admire—a person who is the sum of his or her experiences, upbringing, mentors, opportunity, savvy, and more. For all of the number crunching and theorizing about talent and drive, the idea of the self-made person still holds an allure in the business world. Gladwell understands that we remain in awe of the groundbreaking computer programmer, record-setting sports star, or whiz kid entrepreneur genius. But there is an untold story, he tells us.

The section on hockey star children and the advantage given to the bigger and older ones, as well as the chapter on the Chinese cultivation of rice and its ultimate connection to math success, seem to be the most tedious, even if they provide detailed information. Gladwell’s writing is much more interesting when he personalizes the success, delving into specific stories of people who stand out in their field.

For those looking for a purely stats-driven tome, this certainly isn’t the business book to satisfy the number crunching social scientist. The author is more concerned with the environment that is more difficult to quantify. Consequently, he offers a more complicated and compelling view of the road to success.

Gladwell reasons that the most successful and extraordinary people “do owe something to parentage and patronage.” It is the “hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” He argues for that step up to see more potential in those that we too quickly write off, and it is this humble and compassionate thought that makes the book more appealing. For academicians, managers, entrepreneurs and leaders truly seeking to empower those around them and tap into the wasted talent in their midst, the author provides strong arguments on the need for grooming those not so well connected.