Fundamentally, success boils down to the combination of three essential ingredients: talent, effort and opportunity. Talent is innate; it cannot be taught or obtained through experience, yet it is the base of the pyramid we call success. Commitment, however, is acquired through foresight and aspiration. At the top of the pyramid are opportunities; it is the quality that distinguishes the excellent from the average. Those exceptional people will be forever indebted to both the seemingly negligible and the obviously advantageous opportunities that were presented to them. Talent is the foundation of success, without it commitment and opportunity have nothing to build on, even so, talent alone is not success. Take Christopher Langan for example, the media dubbed him “the smartest man in America”. In fact, he might even be the smartest person in the world. Einstein is the embodiment of intellectual success; his IQ is documented to be 160. In 1999, the television program 20/20 aired an interview with neuropsychologist Robert Novelly, in which he confirmed that Christopher Langan's IQ was 210. Dr. Novelly also described Langan's IQ as "the highest individual I have ever seen". never measured in 25 years." In high school he got a perfect score on the SAT even though he fell asleep during the test. Langan attended Montana State University, but his financial problems and his belief that he could teach his professors more than they could teach him led him to abandon Langan is best known for his role in developing the “theory of the relationship between mind and reality.” Beyond that, his name rarely surfaces as he defines success, even though he possessed such extraordinary talent became an entrepreneur billionaire, instead took a strip... middle of paper... he was wealthy and they could afford to send him to Lakeside, one of the few schools with access to a timeshare terminal 1968. He also lived within walking distance of the University of Washington; Together, these crucial opportunities can be credited with bringing Bill Gates to the status he is now. Success is often thought to be the product of creativity, leadership and attitude. While many successful people possess these qualities, they are not the building blocks of success. To stand out in a crowd of ordinary people, a person must be talented and willing to work hard in his field of choice, but, most importantly, he must be lucky. Every successful person from the dawn of humanity to this moment is the product of favorable odds. Works Cited Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The success story. New York: Little, Brown and, 2008. Print.