The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

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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...