The Tipping Point
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| The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference | |
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| Author | Malcolm Gladwell |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Little Brown |
| Publication date | 2000 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-316-34662-4, ISBN 0-316-31696-2 (first edition) |
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (ISBN 0-316-31696-2) is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, first published by Little Brown in 2000.
Contents |
[edit] Overview
Tipping points are "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable."[1] Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term, "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."[2] The book seeks to explain and describe enormous and "mysterious" sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do."[3] The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the dramatic drop in the New York City crime rate in the late 1990s.
[edit] The three rules of epidemics
Gladwell describes the "three rules of epidemics" (or "agents of change") in the tipping points of epidemics.
- The Law of the Few: "The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social skills."[4] Gladwell describes these people in the following ways:
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- Connectors are the people who "link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together."[5] To illustrate, Gladwell cites the midnight ride of Paul Revere, Milgram's experiments in the small world problem, Dallas businessman Roger Horchow, the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" trivia game, and Chicagoan Lois Weisberg.
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- Mavens are "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information."[6] They accumulate knowledge, especially about the marketplace, and know how to share it with others.
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- Salesmen are "persuaders", charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, that makes others want to agree with them. Gladwell's examples include California businessman Tom Gau and news anchor Peter Jennings, and he cites several studies about how people are persuaded.
- The Stickiness Factor: the specific content of a message that makes it memorable and have impact. The children's television programs Sesame Street and Blue's Clues are specific instances of enhancing stickiness and systematically engineering stickiness into a message.
- The Power of Context: Human behavior is sensitive to and strongly influenced by its environment. As Gladwell says, "Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur."[7] For example, "zero tolerance" efforts to combat minor crimes such as fare-beating and vandalism on the New York subway led to a decline in more violent crimes city-wide. Gladwell describes the bystander effect, and explains how Dunbar's number plays into the tipping point, using Rebecca Wells' novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, evangelist John Wesley, and the high-tech firm Gore Associates.
[edit] Other key concepts
Gladwell also includes two chapters of case studies, situations in which tipping point concepts were used in specific situations. These situations include the athletic shoe company Airwalk, the diffusion model, how rumors are spread, decreasing the spread of syphilis in Baltimore, and teen suicide in Micronesia and teen smoking in the U.S.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Walsh, Bryan. "A green tipping point", Time Magazine, 2007-10-12. Retrieved on 2007-12-29.
- ^ Gladwell, p. 12
- ^ Gladwell, p. 7
- ^ Gladwell, p. 33.
- ^ Gladwell, p. 38
- ^ Gladwell, p. 19
- ^ Gladwell, p. 129.
