The making of an expert

This article is made available to you by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T.
Cokely. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement.
www.hbrreprints.org
The Making of an
Expert
by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and
Edward T. Cokely
New research shows that
outstanding performance is
the product of years of
deliberate practice andcoaching, not of any innate
talent or skill.
Reprint R0707J
This article is made available to you by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T.
Cokely. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement.
The Making of an
Expert
by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and
Edward T. Cokely
harvard business review • managing for the long term • july–august 2007 page1
COPYRIGHT © 2007 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
New research shows that outstanding performance is the product of
years of deliberate practice and coaching, not of any innate talent or
skill.
Thirty years ago, two Hungarian educators,
László and Klara Polgár, decided to challenge
the popular assumption that women don’t
succeed in areas requiringspatial thinking,
such as chess. They wanted to make a point
about the power of education. The Polgárs homeschooled
their three daughters, and as part
of their education the girls started playing
chess with their parents at a very young age.
Their systematic training and daily practice
paid off. By 2000, all three daughters had
been ranked in the top ten female players in
the world. Theyoungest, Judit, had become a
grand master at age 15, breaking the previous
record for the youngest person to earn that title,
held by Bobby Fischer, by a month. Today
Judit is one of the world’s top players and has
defeated almost all the best male players.
It’s not only assumptions about gender differences
in expertise that have started to crumble.
Back in 1985, Benjamin Bloom, aprofessor
of education at the University of Chicago, published
a landmark book, Developing Talent in
Young People, which examined the critical factors
that contribute to talent. He took a deep
retrospective look at the childhoods of 120
elite performers who had won international
competitions or awards in fields ranging from
music and the arts to mathematics and neurology.
Surprisingly, Bloom’swork found no early
indicators that could have predicted the virtuosos’
success. Subsequent research indicating
that there is no correlation between IQ and expert
performance in fields such as chess, music,
sports, and medicine has borne out his findings.
The only innate differences that turn out
to be significant—and they matter primarily in
sports—are height and body size.
So what doescorrelate with success? One
thing emerges very clearly from Bloom’s work:
All the superb performers he investigated had
practiced intensively, had studied with devoted
teachers, and had been supported enthusiastically
by their families throughout their developing
years. Later research building on
Bloom’s pioneering study revealed that the
amount and quality of practice were key factors
inthe level of expertise people achieved.
This article is made available to you by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T.
Cokely. Further posting, copying or distributing is copyright infringement.
The Making of an Expert
harvard business review • managing for the long term • july–august 2007 page 2
Consistently and overwhelmingly, the evidence
showed that
experts are alwaysmade, not born
.
These conclusions are based on rigorous research
that looked at exceptional performance
using scientific methods that are verifiable and
reproducible. Most of these studies were compiled
in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise
and Expert Performance, published last year by
Cambridge University Press and edited by K.
Anders Ericsson, one of the authors of this article.
The...