Tipping point

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For other uses, see Tipping point (disambiguation).

The phrase tipping point or angle of repose is a sociological term that refers to that dramatic moment when something unique becomes common.

The phrase was coined by Morton Grodzins, who studied integrating American neighborhoods in the early 1960s. He discovered that most of the white families would remain in the neighborhood so long as the comparative number of black families remained very small. But, at a certain point, when "one too many" black families arrived, the remaining white families would move out en masse in a process known as white flight. He called that moment the "tipping point." The idea was expanded and built upon by Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Schelling in 1972. A similar idea underlies Mark Granovetter's threshold model of collective behavior.

1 Technology
2 Hitting the mainstream
3 See also
4 External link

[edit] Technology

The term subsequently became applied to the popular acceptance of new technologies. It served as a good explanation of the success of VHS over Betamax, for instance. The concept has been applied in many fields from economics to epidemiology. It can also be compared to phase transition in physics or the propagation of memes or populations in an unbalanced ecosystem.

[edit] Hitting the mainstream

The term was popularised and applied to daily life by Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 bestselling book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Since the publication of Gladwell's book, "tipping point" has become a common cliché, with uses often far removed from its theoretical underpinnings. The concept has been applied to any process in which beyond a certain point, the rate at which the process (chemical, sociological, environmental etc.) proceeds increases dramatically. Mathematically, the angle of repose may be seen as an inflection point. In control theory, the concept of positive feedback describes the same phenomenon, with the problem of balancing an inverted pendulum being the classic embodiment.