Topic: The Tipping Point By Malcolm Gladwell

Type of paper:	Book Report
Subject area:	Education
Academic level:	College
Style:	MLA
Size:	28.0 kB
Word count:	638
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Date submitted:	2008-11-21 20:45:16
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(Name (Professor (Subject (Date )
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point , Malcolm Gladwell 's 2000 bestseller , discusses how
some trends becomes gigantically popular while others fade away in the
background without even leaving any mark . The Tipping Point , he says , is
``the moment of critical mass , the threshold , the boiling point (12 )
where the ``unexpected becomes expected , where radical change is more
than possibility ' but already a certainty (13-14 ) It is when certain
ideas , products , messages or behaviors suddenly turn into something of
an epidemic , where everyone or majority of the people all of a sudden
gets caught up in it without warning . We know right away that a certain
trend has become an epidemic : its spread demonstrates contagious
behavior , little changes had affected its growth tremendously , and it
happened fast . According to Gladwell , these characteristics of an
epidemic can be rooted to three factors .
The Law of the Few is discussed in the second chapter aptly titled ,
``Connectors , Mavens , and Salesmen ' Gladwell explains that phenomenal
trends can be attributed to the few people that , through word-of-mouth ,
are able to influence others to either love or hate the trend . Gladwell
explains that ``the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily
dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of
social gifts (33 ) Connectors link different people to each other and
are referred to as ``people specialists (59 . Mavens , on the other
hand , are ``information brokers ' that possess , share , and acquire
information on a lot of different products , prices , or places (62 , 69 )
The third type of influential people would be the salesmen , who can
persuade and convince others into believing what they want .
The Stickiness Factor is a trend 's unique quality of being memorable ,
or of being able to ``stick ' to the minds of the public . The elements
that make something sticky are not really wonderfully big or exciting
in fact , they are actually the small and seemingly trivial things that
appear to be counterintuitive to the norm or conventional wisdom . For
instance , the makers of Sesame Street thought it would be a good idea to
educate children through television , even though experiments and
educational experts saw television as having low involvement (99-110 )
The simple idea of using television to teach children surprisingly
became a success , which had been followed by other educational viruses
such as Blue 's Clues . As Gladwell puts it , ``there is a simple way to
package information that , under the right circumstances , can make it
irresistible ' or sticky (132 )
Finally , the Power of Context consists of the conditions and
circumstances of the times and places in which trends occur . The
environment and historical moments where the trend originates are also
responsible for making it phenomenal . Contextual changes are responsible
for tipping an epidemic , as is in the case of the crimes in New York
City , wherein crime became a contagious behavior due to the
circumstances in the city (140-143 ) However , Gladwell also adds that
Environmental Tipping Points...

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