When Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg was researching his newest book “Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business,” he spent months researching the story of Malcolm McLean, who created the modern shipping container.

Duhigg, the author of the best-selling “The Power of Habit” spent months reading about him and interviewing members of his family as well as former colleagues. Eventually, he realized, “the lesson he offered — that a single-minded devotion to an idea can spur massive change — turned out not to be as universal and important as the other concepts I wanted to explain,” he writes.

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