The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Reviews

• Interesting Read

  
  By on 2000-05-07
  Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for New Yorker Magazine, in The Tipping Point, writes a fascinating study of human behavior patterns, and shows us where the smallest things can trigger an epidemic of change. Though loaded with statistics, the numbers are presented in a way that makes the book read like an exciting novel. Gladwell also gives several examples in history, where one small change in behavior created a bigger change on a national level. He also studies the type of person or group that it takes to make that change.

  Gladwell's first example is the resurgence of the popularity of Hush Puppies, which had long been out of fashion, and were only sold in small shoe stores. Suddenly, a group of teenage boys in East Village, New York, found the cool to wear. Word-of-mouth advertising that these trend-setters were wearing the once-popular suede shoes set off an epidemic of fashion change, and boys all over America had to have the "cool" shoes.

  Galdwell also examines the difference in personality it takes to trigger the change. For example, we all know of Paul Revere's famous ride, but how many of us know that William Dawes made a similar ride? The difference was that people listened to Revere and not to Dawes. Why? Revere knew so many different people. He knew who led which village, knew which doors to knock on to rouse the colonists. Dawes didn't know that many people and therefore could only guess which people to give his message.

  There are several other phenomena that Gladwell examines, showing the small things that spark a change, from the dip in the New York City crime rate to the correlation between depression, smoking and teen suicide. If you want to change the world for the better, this book will give you an insight into the methods that work, and those that will backfire. It's all in knowing where to find The Tipping Point.

  Jo @ MyShelf.Com
  
  

• Great Insights into Mass Behaviors

  
  By A14XAUHOX61HJW on 2000-03-07
  Despite an earlier reviewer poo-pooing this book for shallow insights, I beg to differ. This book is a fascinating and original take on what makes people behave in a certain way en masse. Tying together Paul Revere, Hush Puppies and many other very accessible ideas makes this book, that is in some ways very academic, read like a thriller. I read it in three sittings. It has an impact on several levels. One, as a marketer, it gave me insights into how word-of-mouth really works. I'll be experimenting with these concepts for years. Second, as a member of society, I gained insight into why I am pulled this way and that by trends. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the groundbreaking book by Robert Cialdini called "Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion." It makes some of the same points. Finally, it makes me think that some savvy activists will find some ways to use these principles to start societal epidemics that will ultimately have a positive effect. I believe Gladwell has introduced a concept, "the Tipping Point," that will have a wide-ranging impact on how we view the world and human behavior.
  
  

• Not the real thing

  
  By on 2000-02-20
  The main problem with this book, for me at least, is that it just isn't substantial enough to be a BOOK. While the original article, which first appeared in the New Yorker quite a while back, was absorbing, delightful, and even thought-provoking, but I suppose my initial positive reaction was mostly due to the fact that it was a MAGAZINE ARTICLE, and I read it--as most people read magazine articles--while eating a meal alone or commuting to work; that is to say, without sitting at my desk, pencil and notepad at hand, paying each word and every sentence my undivided attention. I don't of course wish to disparage journalism or books written by journalists, but "The Tipping Point" suffers, I think, from everything that can go wrong when one adopts, expands, or simply reprints a newspaper or magazine article into a full-length book. The arguments Gladwell presents, when they're surrounded not by cute and funny New Yorkers cartoons but between the cardboards of a hardcover book, seem lightweight at best, and commonsensical, perhaps even farfetched, at worst. A fellow reviewer below has already noted the strange absence of any discussion of memes. Allow me to add that in a book that purports to reveal the little hidden mechanics that bring about tidal-wave changes in our social behavior and our society, the absence of detailed examination of memetics is simply unforgivable. (It'd be like writing a book that claims to talk about 20th-century physics but skips any mention of quantum mechanics.) In addition, some of the "scientific" methods employed by Gladwell seems dubious when they're not simply quixotic. For instance, the little experiment whereby Gladwell gave a list of people's last names to "400" people to read, asking them to give themselves a point every time they personally "know" someone who shares any of the last names on that list, seems just so pointless as not to merit inclusion even in a shoddily written article, much less a real book. And what's Gladwell's conclusion from this little experiment? That college students don't score too well, because they don't yet have the opportunity to know too many people, while real professionals, especially those whose business it is to have a lot of business connections, score the best. (You don't say!) And then Gladwell went on, apparently oblivious of the obviousness of it all, to dub the latter, the well connected, "the Connectors" (his capitalization; I should also mention that the author, like many fellow journalists, has the annoying habit of coining catchphrases, the usefulness of most of which seems rather questionable). If you think this is ridiculous, please allow me to assure you that the book is full of examples like this. All I can say is that if you're intrigued by the idea of the "tipping point," perhaps you should just go to your local library and photocopy those few pages of the New Yorker, rather than spend your money on the actual book. It's just not worth it.
  
  

• Something Smells Here

  
  By on 2000-03-28
  Look, every time someone writes an objection to this book, someone else writes a lengthy--and annoynomous tribute that appears to be the work of a professional. It seems to me that it is not only casual readers who are contributing their comments here, but publicists and promoters. As an earlier critic pointed out, this book is being pushed mightily by its publisher, who invested heavily in it. Making this a best seller is job number one for these folks, but as many commenters have noted, few serious professional critics have taken more than passing notice of this book. (Rather than reading the isolated blurbs offered here, I suggest readers turn to the full text of reviews appearing in, for example, the New York Times and Salon.) It seems to me that someone is making sure that any criticism of Tipping Point on this site is blotted out by a stream of raves. This is neither fair to the reader nor, for that matter, really honest.
  
  

• Brings 'Sticky' Ideas to a Nexus

  
  By AXE63RS0W650E on 2000-03-22
  I read this book in part of one day - it's a good, quick read. Unlike some of the people who didn't care for the book - I never read the New Yorker article. It may be that the book doesn't add enough new info to excite folks who have read that article. But to me the book threw out a good number of new ideas and concepts very quickly and very clearly. I found his ability to draw a nexus between things that, on the surface seem very divergent, was very interesting, and he did it smoothly, without jumping around a lot.

  The thrust of the book is that there are three things that can converge to bring about dramatic and perhaps unexpectedly fast changes in our society. These are the context (the situational environment - especially when it's near the balance or 'tipping point'), the idea, and the people involved. His point is that very small changes in any or several of the context, the quality of the idea (which he calls 'stickiness', ie how well the idea sticks), or whether the idea reaches a very small group of key people can trigger a dramatic epidemic of change in society.

  "In a given process or system some people matter more than others." (p.19). "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." (p.33).

  He divides these gifted people into three categories: Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople. "Sprinkled among every walk of life ... are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors." (p. 41). "I always keep up with people." (p. 44 quoting a "Connector"). "in the case of Connectors, their ability to span many different worlds is a function of something intrinsic to their personality, some combination of curiosity, self-confidence, sociability, and energy." (p.49). "The point about Connectors is that by having a foot in so many different worlds they have the effect of bringing them all together." (p.51).

  "The word Maven comes from the Yiddish, and it means one who accumulates knowledge." (p. 60). "The fact that Mavens want to help, for no other reason than because they like to help, turns out to be an awfully effective way of getting someone's attention." (p.67). "The one thing that a Maven is not is a persuader. To be a Maven is to be a teacher. But it is also, even more emphatically to be a student." (p.69).

  "There is also a select group of people -- Salesmen -- with the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing." (p. 70). He goes on to describe an individual named Tom Gau who is a Salesman. "He seems to have some indefinable trait, something powerful and contagious and irresistible that goes beyond what comes out of his mouth, that makes people who meet him want to agree with him. It's energy. It's enthusiasm. It's charm. It's likability. It's all those things and yet something more." (p. 73).

  He then goes into the importance of actually gathering empirical data about ideas, and not just relying on theory or assumption to determine quality, or as he calls it, 'stickiness.' He gives examples of where assumptions have been debunked with data. "Kids don't watch when they are stimulated and look away when they are bored. They watch when they understand and look away when they are confused." (p.102). "Children actually don't like commercials as much as we thought they did." (p. 118) "The driving force for a preschooler is not a search for novelty, like it is with older kids, it's a search for understanding and predictability." (p. 126) Hence why your three year old can watch those Barney videos over and over until the tape breaks - it becomes predictable after the third or fourth viewing. This is probably also why Barney suddenly falls out of favor when predictability is less important than novelty.

  Finally, there's a point he makes he calls the rule of 150. He starts with some British anthropologists idea that brain size, neocortex size actually, is related to the ability to handle the complexities of social groups. The larger the neocortex, the larger the social group that can be managed. She then charts primate neocortex size against known average social group sizes for various primates, other than humans. Then she plugs human neocortex size into the equation, and out pops 147.8, or about 150. Now that would be not so interesting, except that he goes on to talk about this religious group, the Hutterites. They are clannish like the Amish or Mennonites, and they have a rule that when a colony approaches 150, they split into two and start a new one. He follows that by noting that Military organizations generally split companies at 150-200. And then he talks about Gore - the company that makes Goretex, among other things. They have a ~150 employee per plant rule.

  "At a bigger size you have to impose complicated hierarchies and rules and regulations and formal measures to try to command loyalty and cohesion. But below 150...it is possible to achieve the same goals infomally." (p.180)

  "When things get larger than that, people become strangers to one another." (p.181)

  "Crossing the 150 line is a small change that can make a big difference." (p. 183)

  On the whole, I thought the book sparked thought and converstaion, and will make me look at life and business a little differently. To me that's a good book.
  
  

• Condescending, badly-written, avoid, avoid, avoid. A void.
  By on 2000-04-09
  As another reviewer pointed out, the central tenet of this book is no great insight for anyone who has much knowledge of mathematics or science generally.

  His points are on the whole so obvious that I fail to see why a book needed to be written to explain them. Essentially, if you want to start a "social epidemic" you should:

  a) make sure you attract people who are either persuasive, know lots of different people, or are "mavens" - enthusiasts in a particular field who have a lot of knowledge and therefore influence among non-enthusiasts. Imagine that - persuasive people are persuasive! And people who know lots of people help make connections between them! Well I never.

  b) make your message "sticky" ie memorable - precisely how is not specified

  c) make sure the "context" is right, in some unspecified way.

  All this is ridiculously obvious.

  As for the style of writing, take this nauseatingly condescending quote: writing about Paul Revere's ride , Gladwell informs us "news of the British march did not come by fax, or by means of a group e-mail. It wasn't broadcast on the nightly news, surrounded by commercials."

  Just fancy that! Lots more examples of similar waffle.
  
  

• NETWORK EXTERNALITY? PAY IT FORWARD? NO, TIPPING POINT
  By A1L8HRCM60W0W7 on 2003-07-19
  Some voracious reading of research on...

  (1) "Network externalities" and "network effects" from economics and
  (2) WOM (word of mouth) research from social/cognitive psychology

  ...and shamelessly rehashing them with a doozy touchy-feely spin on "small things can inspire big things" a la "Pay it Forward" (that Helen Hunt/Kevin Spacey rigmarole) -- and lo and behold, you have a tipping point for a book that people are stomping over each other to buy and magically provoke their thinking about marketing or sociological phenomena.

  Indeed every once in a while we need a business book that summarizes and makes sense of all that goes on in academia, so even such blatant intellectual debauchery would be fine as long as the BASIC professional integrity of attribution was upheld. The very least one can expect from such a self-proclaimed "biography of an idea" endeavour is an honest acknowledgement of WHERE the idea came from.

  As though it was not embarrassing enough that epithets like "maven" and "connector" are well established in WOM or network externality research since nearly 20 years, we were also fed with the MOST commonly used illustrations -- faxes becoming important because other people had faxes, or some quaint fashion catching up overnight (Hush Puppies in this case, but it could be any number of things), or how broadband has swept our world, or the success of a TV show -- these are all primetime textbook examples to explain the very fundamental concepts of network externality in ECON 101. Some arcane mention of epidemiologists' theories does not count because the whole hypothesis here is to provide something that is "beyond the world of medicine and diseases". Not one mention of the "Network Externality" in the book or in the glossary at the end.

  To its minor credit, the book is written with a readable flow although expect to have each and every minutiae explained in a "for dummies" style. For e.g., the perfectly simple notion that yawning is visually and aurally contagious is explained over 2 pages of relatively small print with about 100 mentions of the word yawn. Yawn. Such excruciating fleshing out of material is understandable of course, given how little of substance there really was in this "thinking" to begin with.

  The text wallows in its conflicting logical morass. Remember, "small things" are supposed to make a big difference. A winding 40 pages are devoted to crime combat in NY under a newly appointed police chief. Forgive me if this concerted annual effort by a legitimate full-fledged police force does NOT sound like a "small thing" to me.

  We are told "What must underlie successful epidemics is a bedrock belief that change is possible". Unfortunately, all the examples Gladwell cites such as a sweeping shoe vogue, faxes becoming popular -- these are all a matter of happenstance instead of a concerted effort by individuals at a point in time. Such is indeed the true nature of contagious phenomenons as he himself mentions at the outset, there is no "bedrock belief" until afterwards when someone sits and analyzes the event. I could also hypothesize that a lot of these mini-revolutions happen when an optimal chain of events is accidentally (unintentionally) spurred on by some triggers in society/environment etc, but that is for another day.

  As though this were not enough we are treated to semi-pompous implications. For e.g., page 131: "There is something PROFOUNDLY counter-intuitive in the definition of stickiness that emerges from all these examples". Really? Would have been nice if it were apparent instead of having us hit on the head with it.

  Come to think of it a "big effect" is a pretty flaky/subjective concept anyway. How could this supposed big effect be sustained? Where are hush puppies now? As for NY's crime rate, many experts such as Andrew Karmen from CUNY (John Jay) believe that the drop in crime rates in NY in 1980s or 90s is insignificant, homicides in the city have risen 10-fold since 1950. How about faxes -- and their big effect being eaten by another big effect (email)?

  What is most piquing though is that in a round-about way we are offered Polyanna solutions as a result of this 3-pronged theory of network externality. One priceless gem emerges when we are convinced how cleaning a subway system would be enough to solve crime rates (with the Bernie Goetz case as a lynchpin). My retorts won't fit this review.

  Whether this is a legitimate business book or a mere avante-garde coffee table thoughtpiece, one would have at the least expected some sort of an organized framework to plan for these "small things" or to sustain the "big effects". None is forthcoming. As for me, the very fact that well-established research is packaged here in a 250-page drawl as a pretentiously seminal idea is quite a put-off in itself. A simple 5-6 page HBR article would have done the job just fine, but then that wouldn't make a lot of money for Gladwell, would it.

  If you are in business and hope to use this stuff for a spiral marketing/branding effort, you'd do a lot better getting your hands on some WOM literature than this inchoate theoretical indulgence.

  Highly over-rated material, this.
  
  

• I've been duped!
  By A2RFA9KAIYGCHX on 2006-06-21
  This book sucks. Don't waste your hard earned money on it. Let me save you a few bucks here: Malcolm Gladwell is either a very self-aggrandizing man who is too busy thinking he is the god of marketing to notice that a great majority of his arguments lack any kind of cohesion or credibility whatsoever, or he is just so excited about his self-proclaimed 'paradigmatic' keys to the essense of social epidemics that he conveniently forgets to include that much needed credible evidence to support his long-winded theories, resulting in a book fit to satiate the appetite of audiences hungry for pop pseudo-science BS that will make them feel smart for reading it. Basically all this book is is a compilation of antecdotal evidence that is supposed to prove the truth in his words. Gladwell's arguments clearly violate some very important rules guiding intelligent thought: correlation does not imply causation (and the fact that two events happened on one occasion at the same time does not necessarily imply correlation), and the idea that a theory is bankable because one instance of antecdotal evidence exists. Umm, okay, that's like saying that I know a guy who won the lottery (I don't, but humor me), so it must be a logically good place to invest my paychecks (I don't have paychecks, but, please, humor me). I mean, I'm a 21-year-old college student, and not even a GOOD college student at that, and I could easily point out the flaws in his arguments -not just a single argument, but ALL of his arguments -as soon as I read them. I didn't even have to put the book down to think for a few minutes before I realized how absolutely pointless and downright ludicrous his 'insights' were. All that aside, his writing style is so patronizing and self-congratulatory that I could hardly stand to read any more than five pages at a time before my face got all scrunched up and I started uncontrollably muttering curse words under my breath. It makes me sad that people read this book and consider it a revelation in modern psychological and scientific thinking, not seeing it for what it is: an apparently very successful (thanks, readers of America) profit-driven waste of time. Gladwell made a ton of money off what probably only took him, like, 15 minutes to write, and THAT is the only thing genius about this book.
  
  
• great exposition of a trivial point
  By on 2000-03-21
  C.P. Snow popularized the notion of 2 worlds, one scientificand one humanistic. Nowhere is the existence of these twin worldsmore obvious than in the praise heaped on this book; one trade reviewer quoted by amazon.com says it "offers an incisive and piquant theory..."

  What, you might ask, is this undiscovered idea? Why its the principle of exponential growth, the idea that the new amount of some quantity being measured is proportional to the initial amount rather than a constant (linear) increase. This is captured in the mathematics that describes how epidemics spread, populations grow (well known to Malthus more than a century ago), radioactivity decays, and so on. And this idea lends the book its title; in an epidemic when the ratio exceeds 1 the infection will spread rapidly; hence it has passed the "tipping point".

  I don't mean to demean Gladwell's book; it is actually quite well written and loaded with interesting examples of this principle at play. For this alone the book is worth reading.

  But what is more illuminating than the examples Gladwell gives is what the critical response to the book says about the mathematical illiteracy of today's intellectual. Exponential growth & decay is a trivial concept to anyone who's ever taken a serious science class, even at the high school level. So the response by the learned community to so simple a concept is a profound confirmation of the reality of Snow's observation. Apparently this simple concept has escaped the intellectuals who shower accolades on this book for providing such fresh insight and perspective.

  In the end I am both saddened and gladdened by this book. Gladdened because the book provides novel examples of a well-known principle in action. Saddened because the intellectual world is so surprised by a concept from the scientific/mathematic world as simple as exponential growth.
  
  

• Multidisciplinary Mastery
  By on 2000-03-06
  I've taught psychology at a university for twenty years, and was prepared to be dubious about Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"; he is, after all, a journalist, not an academic. Despite his highly readable style, though, I was amazed by the level of sophistication and scholarship that he brings to his subjects. You can cavil about details, but the vigor and intellectual energy of the book is formidable. "The Tipping Point" assembles sometimes arcane findings from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Consumer Researcher, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, American Journal of Sociology, International Journal of Criminology and Penology and other scholarly resources. It explains and builds upon research by such major social-science figures as Marc Granovetter, Jonathan Crane, and the legendary Thomas Schelling. And the project is infused with an interdisciplinary ease: a special pleasure is the unexpected juxtapositions of research in linguistics, medical science, social psychology, marketing, political science, and mathematics All of which is to say that the erudition and theoretical sophistication of this work is truly impressive. It may be aimed at "civilians," but the guy can teach us scholars a few things
  
  
• A thought provoking, interesting and potentially useful book
  By A1RFWINZ5W2EBF on 2000-07-01
  This relatively short book is a very pleasant surprise. Usually I am quite skeptical of new theories and concepts that attempt to explain human behavior, since the thinking, embedded in pompous language, often proves shallow and the primary goal seems simply to grab attention and book sales. Instead I found Gladwell's book well written, fast paced, interesting and thought provoking. Subject to translating its ideas successfully into practical actions, I believe it is potentially very useful in social sciences and business.

  Gladwell's use of examples from very different fields adds to the interest in and credibility of the factors that contribute to a sudden "epidemic" - good or bad - of a behavior, an idea, a product or a belief. I am particularly intrigued by his concept that the true underlying causes and explanations for what we perceive as extremely complex social issues, for example, can be "tipped" with simple, direct actions in the right place at the right time. All too often governments and companies try to solve their big problems with excessively expensive, but ineffective programs or projects. I agree with him that attempted solutions frequently fail to address basic motivational factors and that the best solutions are often counterintuitive.

  For those of us in business, I think the concepts in this book, properly applied, could make us more effective. Gladwell's business examples, his linkage to Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" and his brief discussion of the "magic 150" make the book worth reading. Far from being a "how to" handbook, considerable thought will be required to apply it practically, which I believe will be a good learning experience.

  As I read the book I realized that many analogs of this concept exist in the physical world. There are many examples from stereo amplifiers to martial arts in which relatively small forces or energy inputs at the right place and time cause large differences in outcomes.

  Why five stars? The book gave me a new perspective for thinking how and why things happen in society and business. It presents interesting observations and information about trends that affect us. I think it will be useful in my business. It is well written. And, it is unpretentiously short.
  
  

• Pop-Psychology Not the Cure
  By on 2000-03-03
  Unfortunately, "The Tipping Point" is a book I must say which I regret having bought. On advice from a friend and all of the good reviews it has had lately I went ahead and bought it. After reading it though, the book itself is, to me, another one of the many examples of mass-marketed popular psychology books, which, when printed, attracts a feeding-frenzy of so-called truth lovers and people who want to find out "how the world really is". (Note how many times this phrase is repeated on the online reviews of the book.) Even Gladwell himself purports to be speaking the "truth" but, unfortunately, examining a few cases which had something in common, or in which even the evidence was overwhelming does not account for"truth" and is in no way part of any psychological-scientific method. Even real psychologists will tell you that statistics cannot capture everything, which Gladwell does not.

  Either way however, what was most disturbing about this book turns on two things. First, Gladwell has coined many terms, e.g. "Mavens," "Connectors," etc, but fails, in significant places, to properly qualify them. Where he does qualify them, the arguments are much less strong than the social psychological weight they are meant to bear. Secondly, and more importantly, for those who are looking for "Cure-alls" to the so-called diseases of the world, and such, Gladwell has advice. But for those of us who are a bit more modest in our scope of possibilities (not to mention better read and more enlightened), the book's final, disgusting section on social engineering can only come as a surprise and a shock. Let's put it this way: In the 1600s, Thomas Hobbes' political and social-theoretical world was a much, much kinder and gentler place than Gladwell's in the 21st Century. I'll leave it at that.
  
  

• Epidemics as an Analogy for Systems Dynamics
  By A1K1JW1C5CUSUZ on 2000-04-24
  Although this book focuses on tipping points, it is really about systems dynamics -- how related phenomena build on each other in feedback loops (for example, adding food to the environment for rapidly growing species, expands their populations). This subject is an essential part of books like The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change, and The Soul at Work. Because the book never makes that connection to systems dynamics, most readers won't either. That's a problem because you will need the tools from these other resources to apply this book's thesis of pushing the tipping point.

  For people who are interested in how to start (or stop) trends, this book is a useful encapsulation of much of the best and most provocative behavioral research in recent years. Unless you follow this subject closely (someone the author would call a Maven), you will find that much of this is new to you.

  On the other hand, if you have been involved in the marketing of trendy items or stopping medical epidemics, this will seem very elementary and old hat.

  I found the book to be a pleasant and quick read of how behaviors move from equilibrium into disequilibrium, caused by some factor that creates the tipping point to expand or decrease the behavior. I suspect you will, too.

  If you want to apply these lessons, you will probably find the book's explanation of the concepts to be just a little too general for your real needs. A good related book to fill in your sense of how human behavior works is Influence by Robert Cialdini.

  Essentially, the book's thesis is that trends grow by expanding the base of those who will spread the word of mouth and be listened to, aided by powerful messages that stick indelibly into the mind and an environment that psychologically encourages the trend.

  The weakness of that argument is that it fails to fully address the physical needs that might be served to support the trend. Sure, psychology is important, but so is physiology. To the author's credit, the examples clearly deal with physiology (such as the smoking and children's television sections), but the book's thesis does not really do so. It is a strange omission. I think some people will be confused about what to do as a result.

  Clearly, this book is about identifying what causes behavior through careful measurement. The examples are especially interesting because the common sense causes are seldom the right ones. For example, some children do not seem to pay much attention to a given educational television show while they play with toys. Actually, these children are picking up as much information from the show as those that do pay undivided attention, because no more than partial attention is needed for these viewers. This reminds me of the lessons about human behavior in the beer game example in The Fifth Discipline where role-playing beer retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers willy-nilly over order and over produce beer because of misinterpreting a temporary shortage as a permanent one, creating a long-term disaster for all concerned. The obvious is often obviously wrong.

  Anyone applying these ideas needs to develop those causation-finding measurement skills. Since the book does not provide much guidance beyond examples of successfully and unsuccessfully using them, about all you can hope for is to remember to get expert help and double check the expert's conclusions with measurements.

  Almost any reader will get a few great stories to use at the next cocktail party or dinner, assuming your companions have not yet read this book. Have fun!
  
  

• NETWORK EXTERNALITY? PAY IT FORWARD? NO, TIPPING POINT
  By A1L8HRCM60W0W7 on 2003-06-12
  Some voracious reading of research on...

  (1) "Network externalities" from economics and
  (2) WOM (word of mouth) research from social/cognitive psychology

  ...and shamelessly rehashing them with a doozy touchy-feely spin on "small things can inspire big things" a la "Pay it Forward" (that Helen Hunt/Kevin Spacey rigmarole) -- and lo and behold, you have a tipping point for a book that people are stomping over each other to buy and magically provoke their thinking about marketing or sociological phenomena.

  Indeed every once in a while we need a business book that summarizes and makes sense of all that goes on in academia, so even such blatant intellectual debauchery would be fine as long as the BASIC professional integrity of attribution was upheld. The very least one can expect from such a self-proclaimed "biography of an idea" endeavour is an honest acknowledgement of WHERE the idea came from.

  As though it was not embarrassing enough that epithets like "maven" and "connector" are well established in WOM or network externality research since nearly 20 years, we were also fed with the MOST commonly used illustrations -- faxes becoming important because other people had faxes, or some quaint fashion catching up overnight (Hush Puppies in this case, but it could be any number of things), or how broadband has swept our world, or the success of a TV show -- these are all primetime textbook examples to explain the very fundamental concepts of network externality in ECON 101. Some arcane mention of epidemiologists' theories does not count because the whole hypothesis here is to provide something that is "beyond the world of medicine and diseases". Not one mention of the "Network Externality" in the book or in the glossary at the end.

  To its minor credit, the book is written with a readable flow although expect to have each and every minutiae explained in a "for dummies" style. For e.g., the perfectly simple notion that yawning is visually and aurally contagious is explained over 2 pages of relatively small print with about 100 mentions of the word yawn. Yawn. Such excruciating fleshing out of material is understandable of course, given how little of substance there really was in this "thinking" to begin with.

  The text wallows in its conflicting logical morass. Remember, "small things" are supposed to make a big difference. A winding 40 pages are devoted to crime combat in NY under a newly appointed police chief. Forgive me if this concerted annual effort by a legitimate full-fledged police force does NOT sound like a "small thing" to me.

  We are told "What must underlie successful epidemics is a bedrock belief that change is possible". Unfortunately, all the examples Gladwell cites such as a sweeping shoe vogue, faxes becoming popular -- these are all a matter of happenstance instead of a concerted effort by individuals at a point in time. Such is indeed the true nature of contagious phenomenons as he himself mentions at the outset, there is no "bedrock belief" until afterwards when someone sits and analyzes the event. I could also hypothesize that a lot of these mini-revolutions happen when an optimal chain of events is accidentally (unintentionally) spurred on by some triggers in society/environment etc, but that is for another day.

  As though this were not enough we are treated to semi-pompous implications. For e.g., page 131: "There is something PROFOUNDLY counter-intuitive in the definition of stickiness that emerges from all these examples". Really? Would have been nice if it were apparent instead of having us hit on the head with it.

  Come to think of it a "big effect" is a pretty flaky/subjective concept anyway. How could this supposed big effect be sustained? Where are hush puppies now? As for NY's crime rate, many experts such as Andrew Karmen from CUNY (John Jay) believe that the drop in crime rates in NY in 1980s or 90s is insignificant, homicides in the city have risen 10-fold since 1950. How about faxes -- and their big effect being eaten by another big effect (email)?

  What is most piquing though is that in a round-about way we are offered Polyanna solutions as a result of this 3-pronged theory of network externality. One priceless gem emerges when we are convinced how cleaning a subway system would be enough to solve crime rates (with the Bernie Goetz case as a lynchpin). My retorts won't fit this review.

  Whether this is a legitimate business book or a mere avante-garde coffee table thoughtpiece, one would have at the least expected some sort of an organized framework to plan for these "small things" or to sustain the "big effects". None is forthcoming. As for me, the very fact that well-established research is packaged here in a 250-page drawl as a pretentiously seminal idea is quite a put-off in itself. A simple 5-6 page HBR article would have done the job just fine, but then that wouldn't make a lot of money for Gladwell, would it.

  If you are in business and hope to use this stuff for a spiral marketing/branding effort, you'd do a lot better getting your hands on some WOM literature than this inchoate theoretical indulgence.

  Highly over-rated material, this.
  
  

• Fascinating Insights!
  By on 2000-03-16
  I began reading this book at night while others were asleep, and was immediately engrossed--the next morning I could not stop babbling about it, and made everyone try the list of names in the section on "Connectors" to see how they scored. Though I came in at an abysmally low "3" myself, I did act the roles of "Maven" and "Salesman" for the book, with my own tiny circle of friends, emailing the NY Times review of "The Tipping Point", published the day I finished reading the book, to everyone I could think of, saying, you must buy this book, the way Gladwell explains himself, the anecdotes provided, was one of the most interesting things I had read in ages. When I bought "The Tipping Point", intrigued by the jacket description, but knowing nothing about it, I did not realize that Gladwell was a New Yorker writer I had long admired. But once I started in, I recognized him and remembered how I had sent on several of his articles to friends--which amused me, and is part of why I score so poorly on the "Connector test", my lack of attention to names, despite fervent endorsement of "ideas" I find, to everyone I know. Along these lines, a book that had a similar impact on me, would be "Presidential Temperament" by Keirsey and Choiniere, a blend of theory about human differences, with vivid real world examples drawn from the Presidents, a method of analysis that just makes intuitive sense of people, the way Gladwell does here with social trends, very useful information for an election year, a book I enthusiastically endorse as much as this one.
  
  
• This book is welcome news, though it isn't all NEW news...
  By A3NQU1649SH0Q4 on 2000-08-11
  
  This medium-sized policy paperback has been selling steadily in the two-and-a-half years since it release and, despite passages that border on the meretricious, it certainly deserves its warm reception.
  
  THE TIPPING POINT is a good and even useful book but not a great one. The author tries to account for the strange situation that takes place when ideas, styles or products reach "tipping point" and go from hang-fire to flash-fire virtually overnight, almost like a chain reaction. (Case in point--the rehabilitation of Hush Puppies from near-obsolescence to the cool guy's shoe in the middle 1990s.)
  
  Gladwell's theories hang on his three main principles: (1) Law of the Few. (2) The Stickiness Factor. (3) The Power of Context. "Law of the Few" helps explain why certain individuals sometimes become the fulcrum of drastic change. According to Gladwell, individuals with a high law-of-few quotient are either connectors, mavens, or salesmen (these are all his terms). Paul ("the British are coming!") Revere and John Wesley were classic connectors, who knew hundreds of well-placed people and through their political and religious societies, had access to thousands more. A maven is a knowledgeable and helpful person who can "get it for you wholesale," so to speak. Salesmen are intuitive people persons who sweep you into their passions and commitments.
  
  "Stickiness" is the memorability factor. In a world of Reeboks and Nikes, Hush Puppies were highly memorable and when lower Manhatten trendoids started wearing them, Middle America caught that via music videos and men's magazines and quickly followed suit. Which explains to the businessperson how demand for supposedly "eccentric" products like Hush Puppies, rather than slowly curving upward in sales after lots of advertising and PR nudging, can explode exponentially, and seemingly out of nowhere. The trick is the "seemingly," and Gladwell urges us to pay attention to the background of successful explosions of thought or style.
  
  Which leads straight to principle no. 3: neither Law of the Few nor Stickiness will get you anywhere without "Context." Gladwell's example: the New York City subway system. When it was a graffiti-covered hellhole, crime flourished. When the graffiti was removed, they got the turnstiles working, and Giuliani's cops started busting people for every act of turnstile-jumping or public urination, more serious incidents of crime went way, way down. The unspoken context that previously had said "you can get away with crime here" had been obliterated.
  
  I have some complaints about this book. Along with some of the other reviewers, I also believe the author did his readers a disservice by not mentioning memes, a person-to-person communication theory first developed in the 1970s that should be on anyone's plate when discussing interpersonal communications.
  
  Also, Gladwell frequently amplifies or merely echoes sociopolitical reasoning that has been amply proven by sticking with what we might call traditional, if somewhat old-fashioned, good-government logic. For instance, increased police patrolling and cleaned-up NYC subways helped reduce crime because (in Gladwellian) the freshened-up system created a context inconducive to crime. The same conclusions can be reached using street-pol lingo: crime went down in the subways because self-respecting people respect a decent venue and besides, even the best citizens can be tempted to abuse law and policy (littering, fare-evading) if it looks like enough of their fellow burghers are getting away with it.
  
  Of course, the latter diction presents a moral point of view, while Gladwell's reasoning is more sociologically fresh, if somewhat abstruse. The point, however, is that both are normative statements: how change occurred and why change was needed -- and the policymaker who decides on a change, no matter how technocratic his language, is nonetheless proposing that such-and-such a change SHOULD take place, why implementing a new policy is, as the philosophers say, "a positive good" for the citizenry.
  
  For what it's worth, in my opinion Gladwell's take on Gotham's subways shows just one important facet of the larger, and highly effective policy change under Giuliani: another is his decision not to commit a disproportionate number of police to keeping large drug sales, grand larceny and crack houses at bay. Previously New York had been operating under a "triage" approach that only proved its own pessimistic assumption that the best use of police was as a kind of permanent floating SWAT team to keep the worst hellishness from taking over entirely. Hair on fire!
  
  When, for better or worse, the transit overhaul was accompanied by police action such as cracking down on cocaine dealers openly selling dime bags in back of the New York Public Library, many feared that "law for law's sake" would introduce another level of oppression. As it happened, though, that kind of trickle-up grassroots approach to crimebusting (while not abandoning all drug raids, of course) created the Context that allowed Manhattan to whisper "Toronto" a little more firmly than it had been bleating, "Beirut."
  
  But why have we abandoned value-laden language ("decent citizens"; "self-respect") from the good old/bad old days in favor of sociological neologisms and abstruseness? Maybe a politician who sounds off with obvious reference to a particular code of ethics/morals may be distasteful or alienating to a cosmopolitan electorate; better to worship the gods of sociology and use language that sounds value-free -- even though it really isn't. And Giuliani-land triumphed in the end, for most if not for all.
  
  More to the point of why a potential reader would want to spend money and time on THE TIPPING POINT: the book's unique usefulness occurs when Gladwell uses his theories to crack other, more novel situations. This is when he begins to look very good and very smart and not at all derivative. In these we count the kind of explanations that are counterintuitive but make good sense according to his theories. For example, the novel "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" became a smash bestseller partly because it wasn't hyped to the sky. The novel had a chance to incubate in the Northern California hatchery of women's salons and literary-discussion groups. Time and again Gladwell make the point that word-of-mouth transmission is the best, and he generally backs that up.
  
  In the past four or five years, the term "tipping point" seems to have entered the vernacular American social vocabulary. I can understand why, even though some major portions of the book seem simply to be reiterating "common sense" in more value-free language. A useful and perhaps quite necessary read, especially for marketers, urbanists, and people who like to keep up with ideas in general; and generally quite well and persuasively written.
  
  This review was originally written for the hardcover original but has, as of September 20, 2004, been substantially revised and updated to apply to the paperback version.
  
  
  ****
  
  
  
• Bait and Switch
  By AB3I74FIW58XI on 2006-12-06
  Based on the other reviews, I am probably the only one on the planet that did not enjoy this book, but I found it an unrewarding read. It was a series of assertions with promises to delight and explain, and the explainations and proof never came. Worse, the reader is left believing that these assertions are facts.
  
  Malcolm Gladwell begins by describing how several items including the rise and fall of Hush Puppy shoes can be viewed as an epidemic. He goes on to describe the mechanics of the spread of epidemics. Unfortunately, Malcom Gladwell never comes back and does anything to demonstrate that his assertions have any basis in fact.
  
  In one example, Mr. Gladwell asserts that there were documented outbreaks of AIDS at the beginning of the 1900s, but that the disease did not "stick." So, we are led to believe then that AIDS disappeared, apparently without victims for another 70 years plus.
  
  Mr. Gladwell continually asserts that a statistical correlation implies cause and effect. Statistically teenage boys have more accidents than teenage girls. Does that mean that we could prevent accidents by performing sex change operations? You get the point.
  
  Some of his assertions are interesting, and they would have made interesting topics around the family dinner table. My objection is that without any level of proof Gladwell's "Tipping Point" does not deliver on what it promises. While interesting, the book did not present any testable or conclusive proofs of its premises. As such, it is dismissable.
  
  
• Behavior Patterns, Stickiness?
  By A1IHT31N8RLPN8 on 2007-10-23
  This is an interesting study of behavior patterns. The author gives the reader plenty of statistics without the usual dryness. The first example about the hush puppies was odd & overblown. But, the example of why we remember Paul revere instead of William Dawes was logical enough, the former simply knew far more people. The author has a fine ability to draw a connection{James Burke like} between things that appear totally different & yet they intersect.
  
  The focus of the book is that there are three points that converge to bring about big changes in society. They are the idea, the folks involved, & the situational environment when it reaches a "tipping point." He classifies these people into three groups, connectors, mavens, & salespeople. The former are the most curious & adaptable.
  
  The second are those who desire & have knowledge, while wishing to help others. The latter is obvious, salespeople are great persuaders. Without them we would not have an economy. When these three groups combine their talents societies can change for the better. I think his best point was in the crucial importance of gathering "empirical data about ideas, rather than relying on assumptions & theories." A very different sort of read, that I don't hesitate to recommend.
  
  
• terrible book
  By A1B5OVJGHD3RSO on 2006-03-27
  this is the worst book i have read in the past five years that i actually finished.
  
  first of all, the basic ideas are interesting, however they are not as counter-intuitive as the author likes to present them. most seem common-sense to me. (one exception is the suicide chapter which summarized some fascinating research into suicide patterns.)
  
  the big problem with this book, however, is the writing. it seems like it was written during the course of 3 all-nighters while high on coffee. the same ideas are repeated endlessly, the same examples referred to, often out of place. you couldn't turn in writing like this as a first draft at the university i went to--did this book have no editor??
  
  the author tirelessly refers back to himself in sentences like "in chaper two I talked about..." and "in The Tipping Point I have...". even worse, he names an idea, like "The Law of the Context" and then says this law "does" something without even carefully explaining what this "law" means. a short example then follows, an example which will pop up again and again whenever that idea is referred to. the author seems to think that coming up with a name for a phenomenon and giving an example of it is tantamount not only to explicating it, but to proving its validity.
  
  basically this book is a piece of extraordinary laziness. the paul revere episode is taken in total from another book--fairly standard practice for the course of the book. my favorite piece of laziness is at the end of the suicide chapter where the author quotes a full paragraph that he had already quoted in full at the beginning of the chapter. is he so lazy that he can't think of a better way to express that point?
  
  the book has not a single original idea or shred of original insight--it is just a hodgepodge of interesting work that has taken place in psychology and sociology on non-linear social phenomena. as such, it needs to be judged by how well it strings together and explicates these ideas, and on this criterion, it doesn't fare very well.
  
  which is a shame. the ideas in this book are interesting and deserve fuller explication.
  
  nonetheless, the book is written in such a simple fashion that it only takes a few hours to read, and you might get some good ideas from that. just please don't call it brilliant.
  
  
• Six Degrees of Classic Status...
  By A194DFZN6NI8CW on 2000-03-15
  I confess: I met and had dinner with Mr. Gladwell on two occasions, nine and twelve years ago, thanks to a mutual friend. (That mutual friend is the son of Lois Weisberg.) Although I don't actually really KNOW Malcolm Gladwell, I think we would consider each other acquaintances if we met in an airport lounge, for example. On reading this book, I determined that I am at best a semi-Conductor and a semi-Maven. All this is for the sake of disclosure, so please read my review with that in mind.

  It is the nature of these seemingly irrelevant details in human "connectivity" which are chronicled in Malcolm Gladwell's elegant little book. If you ever wondered how trends begin and rumors spread, you will have ample food for thought on reading these essays. They are a delight to read. But "The Tipping Point" also communicates something much deeper about the nature of human societies -- and human values -- without coming to hard and fast conclusions.

  I recommend this book. It is satisfying on several different levels. I am actually buying it for selected friends and acquaintances, part of my stealth campaign to create a minor classic. And why not? A former science writer for the Washington Post, Gladwell is easily the best of the young New Yorker writers (he is still in his 30s), and this is his first published book. His will be a career to follow, and he will cetainly go on to write other important works; why not follow him from the beginning? But don't take my word for it -- buy or borrow a copy, and see if you agree. Then tell your friends.
  
  

• Gladwell is king, but don't let's get too excited
  By A2ZZ9C2U9ITFNH on 2005-10-13
  I'm a huge admirer of Malcolm Gladwell's essays in the New Yorker and of this book. He's a master teacher and synthesizer of complex ideas and (seemingly) disparate trends. Tipping Point is fun to read and you'll learn a great deal from it. I'm shying away from 5 stars, however, because I don't believe there is as much practical application as fans have imagined (or wished) there was. The Tipping Point is more of a post-game wrap-up, showing how ideas, trends travel, but it isn't really going to teach you how to make your idea/product/self into the next big thing.
  
  
• Relevant to many current issues -- and fun too
  By A31980UORXABFG on 2000-04-01
  Let me start be saying that I'm not connected in any way with the publisher of this book. I further suggest that the glowing reader reviews for this book might be due to the fact that most people who have read it enjoyed it. The positive reviews are long because these readers are supporting their opinions with reasons, rather than just giving knee-jerk reactions and conspiracy theories. On to more important matters... I was quite surprised that The Tipping Point was not an overly thick book. At 288 pages, it is a good length, but not a difficult book to finish in a reasonable amount of time. Gladwell's experience as a magazine writer really shows in the way he manages to fill those pages with as much relevant information as one might find in a much longer book. In teaching us about the way social epidemics behave, Gladwell obviously uses many of his own ideas to make the lesson enjoyable to a wide range of people. Parts of the book are written in a way that invites the reader to participate. Gladwell administered a "connectedness" test to a variety of people, to compare how many people they know. The test is included in the book for the reader to try. The section on the contagiousness of yawns is written so suggestively that it makes the reader part of a live demonstration. I yawned at least four or five times while reading a page and a half on the subject. Real-world examples are used extensively. Gladwell analyzes Paul Revere's ride to illustrate how word-of-mouth travels. Children's shows serve as examples of how to get (and hold) a person's attention. The Hutterites and Gore, the company that makes Gore-Tex, both illustrate the same principle of group behaviour. The list goes on and on. The Tipping Point is filled with the views of real people interviewed by Gladwell. They include scientists, marketing experts, TV show creators, and many others who personify the ideas expressed in the book. All of these individual ideas and principles are neatly tied into one central argument. I found that many seemingly illogical things were clearly explained in The Tipping Point. I now have a better understanding of why some popular children's shows are virtually unwatchable by adults, or why teenagers suddenly start dressing in ways would have made them a target of ridicule only a couple of years before (and will again in a couple of years). In fact, it was nothing short of amazing the way Gladwell's book can be applied to so many of the important issues facing my community right now. Squeegee laws, crime, government reform, and smoking bylaws -- The Tipping Point has information relevant to all of them. Some of what Gladwell writes about human behaviour seems logical enough, but other ideas fly in the face of conventional thinking. I don't necessarily agree with all of his interpretations, but Gladwell does make a very convincing case. He backs his statements up with a substantial amount of research, citing studies whose results range from curious to humorous to downright disturbing. In all, The Tipping Point is a thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable book that was very hard to put down.
  
  
• Beguiling nonsense
  By A1RPTVW5VEOSI on 2004-04-12
  Despite all the clamor and fandom, Gladwell's thesis is essentially nonsense. What he claims, in essence, is that a few well-placed and influential people can be the critial factor in social change. He attempts to prove this by working backwards, finding the "early adopters" and pointing to them as the critical factor in a new trend, movement or whatever.

  Careful and thoughtful readers might ask themselves: If these early adopters are the important factor in new trends, shouldn't they be the critical factor in more than one new trend? And interestingly enough, they are not. And that is the flaw in the argument.

  Looking at any movement you're going to find that *someone* had to be first, even if if the growth of the movement was totally random. The real critical factor in the growth of new trends is not the people who are influential, but rather the opposite- people who are very easily influenced. They're the ones who follwo every new trend, or buy every new consumer good. And this is something that social scientists- and Madison Avenue- have known for decades.
  
  

• I'm thrilled he wrote this book
  By A1XQ3OFXLTF081 on 2000-02-28
  Gladwell's essay "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg" came out in The New Yorker last year and totally changed the way I looked at my friends, my acquaintances, their roles in my life, and my role in theirs. I must have passed the article on to about 20 people (making me a "Maven" I suppose.) I'm absolutely thrilled that he's expanded on his ideas to book-length. A remarkable piece of thinking and writing.
  
  
• Learning How to Grow Faster from the Metaphor of Epidemics!
  By A1K1JW1C5CUSUZ on 2001-02-20
  Tipping points are those places where geometric increases follow, that are temporarily unbounded by other limits. For example, when lily pads cover a little more than half of a pond, the rest of the pond's surface will soon follow. That last doubling will cause almost more surface to be covered than all of the prior growth, but will take only a fraction of the time. Although this book focuses on tipping points, it is really about systems dynamics -- how related phenomena build on each other in feedback loops (for example, how adding food to the environment for rapidly growing species expands their populations). This subject is an essential part of books like The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change, and The Soul at Work. Because the book never makes that connection to systems dynamics, most readers won't either. That's a problem because you will need the tools from these other resources and disciplines to apply this book's thesis of pushing the tipping point. Missing this connection is the book's main weakness.

  For people who are interested in how to start (or stop) trends, this book is a useful encapsulation of much of the best and most provocative behavioral research in recent years. Unless you follow this subject closely (someone the author would call a Maven), you will find that much of this is new to you.

  On the other hand, if you have been involved in the marketing of trendy items or stopping medical epidemics, this will seem very elementary and old hat.

  I found the book to be a pleasant and quick read of how behaviors move from equilibrium into disequilibrium, caused by some factor that creates the tipping point to expand or decrease the behavior. If you are like me, I suspect you will, too.

  If you want to apply these lessons, you will probably find the book's explanation of the concepts to be just a little too general for your real needs. A good related book to fill in your sense of how human behavior works is Influence by Robert Cialdini.

  Essentially, the book's thesis is that trends grow by expanding the base of those who will spread the word of mouth and be listened to, aided by powerful messages that stick indelibly into the mind and an environment that psychologically encourages the trend.

  The weakness of that argument is that it fails to fully address the physical needs that might be served to support the trend. Sure, psychology is important, but so is physiology. To the author's credit, the examples clearly deal with physiology (such as the smoking and children's television sections), but the book's thesis does not really do so. It is a strange omission. I think some people will be confused about what to do as a result.

  Clearly, this book is about identifying what causes behavior through careful measurement. The examples are especially interesting because the common sense causes are seldom the right ones. For example, some children do not seem to pay much attention to a given educational television show while they play with toys. Actually, these children are picking up as much information from the show as those that do pay undivided attention, because no more than partial attention is needed for these viewers. This reminds me of the lessons about human behavior in the beer game example in The Fifth Discipline where role-playing beer retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers willy-nilly over order and over produce beer because of misinterpreting a temporary shortage as a permanent one, creating a long-term disaster for all concerned. The obvious is often obviously wrong.

  Anyone applying these ideas needs to develop those causation-finding measurement skills. Since the book does not provide much guidance beyond examples of successfully and unsuccessfully using them, about all you can hope for is to remember to get expert help and double check the expert's conclusions with measurements.

  Almost any reader will at least get a few great stories to use at the next cocktail party or dinner, assuming your companions have not yet read this book. Have fun, and enjoy more irresistible growth as a result!
  
  

• Interesting book, but not all I'd hoped for
  By A3PV1XZLT8GO82 on 2001-03-17
  A couple of friends recommended this book to me, so I got a copy to see what they were so enthused about. The author uses a number of interesting examples to support his point that there's a point that the ordinary becomes extraordinary. As I went through school and life, I learned the phrase "critical mass" to describe the same concept that Gladwell calls "the tipping point."

  I was hoping for more. As a business owner, I was looking for a how-to book, which this could have been. Instead, it's more of an historical narrative. If you like to read thought-provoking case studies, you'll enjoy this volume. It was interesting and entertaining for me as airplane reading. The reader is left to his own devices to explore ways to apply the information shared in the book.

  The author is a former business and science writer for the Washington Post, now a staff writer for The New Yorker. This fact explains why the book seems to be a collection of feature stories that might have some sort of connection. Gladwell does organize his presentations, talking about stickiness, the power of context, the power of translation, three rules of epidemics, and the law of the few. I would have liked to see more strength to the reasoning behind the organization.

  If you like good stories that look at some familiar-and some not-so-familiar-stories from a different perspective, read this book. If you're looking for a book to show you how to move your product, cause, or company to that critical mass or tipping point to become tremendously successful, keep looking.
  
  

• An important book for visionaries
  By on 2004-03-13
  The Tipping Point is a fascinating book. Having just started my own business, I found this book offered the missing link to help me reach out and achive success.

  The Tipping Point is an important book. Must reading for all business people.
  
  

• A fascinating analysis of why little things do matter
  By A3LEIG4U66RSQ on 2000-02-16
  Little things matter. That's the lesson of "The Tipping Point." Want to lower crime in New York? You could address all problems of poverty and alienation. Or you could just clean up graffiti and start arresting people who pee in the street. Gladwell's premise, which he states interestingly and for the most part convincingly, is that small social cues, linked with group effects, can produce major social changes. The book can be read in an evening, and offers an interesting departure from conventional wisdom. My only complaint is that Gladwell's analysis overlaps considerably with the study of memetics, which he unaccountably doesn't mention. But this is a quibble. An interesting and readable book.
  
  
• Common sense in book form (read: unneccessary)
  By A12R5NK1AAJ1GU on 2005-04-16
  I came into this book with an open mind and became bored first with the dry, witless writing style. Then i felt both insulted and incredulous once I saw where it was going: could he REALLY be serious? And with all Gladwell's talk of tipping points, Connectors, Mavens, and what have you, I had only one word to say... Duh.
  
  You will find yourself wondering why someone bothered to write down something so inherently obvious as the exponential growth of trends, the fact that extraverts have larger social networks than the typical person, and that people who have information can be informative. The "book", as i call it because it is simply a collection of anecdotes that tie in questionably at best to his "thesis", tries so hard to be revolutionary and intellectual that I almost had to laugh at the obviousness of the message. Re-heated leftovers of theorists who actually expounded upon their ideas with an iota of sense and academic background...decades ago! Though I don't know any titles, I'd say that there are probably countless authors with backgrounds in mathematics and science who have written qualified and actually groundbreaking prose on the loosely linked ideas in Tipping Point. Pretentiousness is getting old - more people should just acknoledge that this book is an uninformative waste of time.
  
  
• Please - Stop Him Before He Writes Another Book!
  By A22RY8N8CNDF3A on 2005-12-07
  This is the second Gladwell book I've read, and unfortunately its as bad as the first (Blink!). His basic point is that little things can make a big difference. Gladwell's problem, however, is that he doesn't know what he's writing about, and it's a fatal flaw.
  
  For example, early in this book he relates how a "small change" in Brooklyn policing strategies turned into a "large drop" in crime. In reality, Gladwell is wrong on both counts. "Broken windows" policing referred to by Gladwell was a large (not small change), and the "large drop" in crime Gladwell referred to had little or nothing to do with it.
  
  The reality is that "broken windows" policing ended up going far beyond simply pursuing those with minor violations (eg. fare-beating) to include studying crime patterns (location, timing, etc.), setting improvement goals, and regular high-level follow-up. Secondly, "Freakonomics" research concluded that the crime-rate decline began BEFORE the change in policing, and that most of the decline was due to increased staffing.
  
  Gladwell also attributed the decline to improved economic conditions - however, no such decline accompanied prior economic good times. Finally, Gladwell offered no explanation of why similar steep declines in crime occurred across the U.S. at the same time - without regard to any change in policing!
  
  Another of Gladwell's problems is that he doesn't seem to understand anything about statistics. The fact that a change in policing suposedly occurred at the same time as a decline in crime rates seems to be "proof" of causation for Gladwell. One of the first lessons in statistics, however, is that "correlation does not imply causation."
  
  Yes there are instances where Gladwell is correct - eg. a key group adopts a new product, and sales take off. But who wants to do research on the accuracy of each premise within a book?
  
  Summarizing, the book starts out poorly, and goes downhill from there - increasingly boring, confusing, and totally lacking in credibility.
  
  Don't confuse, aggravate, misinform yourself with this book!
  
  
  

• Crimes Against Logic
• Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye
• Leverage: How to Create Your Own "Tipping Points" in Business And in Life
• The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing
• Creating Contagious Commitment: Applying the Tipping Point to Organizational Change