Book Review: The Tipping Point

How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference!

Malcolm Gladwell's  The Tipping Point is a collection stories about what he terms as "social epidemics". How do things like the American Revolution, Sesame Street, and wars on crime take off from their humble beginnings? The simple answer is that they grow steadily, and in most cases slowly, until they eventual tip and take off into more prominent positions in society.

Many small things around us are easily taken for granted. Your friend that knows "everybody". The graffiti, or lack thereof, in public places. The format of a children's show like Sesame Street. All of these things while appearing to be completely different have one thing in common. They all are products of many small factors that lead to their eventual prominence in our society. 

There are many parts to the tipping point, and to describe them all would not only do a disservice to the book, but it would also take me to long. That being said I will focus on a few of the prominent pieces of "social epidemics".

The first being that friend of yours who knows "everybody". Gladwell describes this person as a "connector". Connectors play important roles in the spread of information by creating a network or web of diverse acquaintances. These are the people you can sit down on a plane with and talk to the entire flight with ease. Mastering the loose tie is what a connector is all about. The weak tie is the person who connects friends to other friends, acquaintances to jobs, and patrons to knew restaurants that come highly recommended. 

Connectors are one type of person that Gladwell describes as integral to the spread of social epidemics. I will allow you to read the book learn about the other two types. What is important is that the message conveyed by these persons must be adequately "sticky". In other words the message must remain on our mind even when the conveyor of the info is gone. Children's shows like Sesame Street and Blue's Clues master the art of being sticky in order to help children learn. These shows scientifically adapted their program in order to determine what stuck in the minds of young viewers. In that way they went above and beyond what might be sticky for an adult. Advertising, marketing and sales are all dependent on the stickiness of product image. If a product is sufficiently, hip, innovative, or at least marketed effectively it will be more sticky to consumers.

So what is the result. Well, overlooking a great amount of minutea that the book covers that little things we may take for granted can eventually cause a little issue to turn into a "social epidemic". I will let you read the book to discover just how people and messages can play a role in reaching that tipping point. What is important is to realize that little changes can add up to make big changes. This can be both for good or bad.

For example a few degrees of temperature may not FEEL much difference. How different does 65 degrees feel from 67 degrees. Or how much different does 14 degrees feel from 17 degrees? Not much. BUT 65 degrees feels a lot better than 14 degrees. TAKE THAT IOWA.

You can all laugh at me when I come crawling back to Becky and Mike with no money!