In reply to Madelyn Blair.

I have not read Colvin's book, but it sounds similar to 'Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success' by Matthew Syed. Both focus on purposeful practice and Syed talks about the importance of top quality coaching.

Interesting comment by Robert Rowntree (2008) on the Colvin book, on Amazon:

"This book is substantially a suspicious rehash of a major peer reviewed article. Colvin and Gladwell Outliers: The Story of Success are chasing the same topic, incredibly within the same few months and referencing the same research. Albeit with different titles and stories. Colvin does a good job giving credit to that author. The problems begin when Colvin starts to take parts of the research and explode the number of pages dedicated to one point -deliberate practice. And while that point, deliberate practice is important, it is one of several ingredients in the making of an expert. In the paper "Making of an expert" by K. Anders Ericsson and others, Harvard Business Review, July 2007 they detail three well accepted conditions:

1. Deliberate Practice - the author cites verbatim with strong emphasis
2. World class coaching - Important but not emphasized well
3. Enthusiastic family support - Very important and not emphasized well"