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Introduction

This summary of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference has been edited down to establish the book’s core ideas and should take less than five minutes to read. While a true appreciation and understanding of Gladwell’s concepts would require a full reading of his book, the following should satisfy the need for a basic introduction to the material.

The Tipping Point describes the social process by which innovative diffusion can begin. Gladwell identifies three classes of innovators - Connectors, Mavins, and Salesmen – can drive a new idea, new product, or new process to the tipping point of mass acceptance.

The Idea of the Tipping Point

The Idea of the Tipping Point

The Tipping Point is that dramatic moment when little causes drive the unexpected to become expected and propel the idea of radical change to certain acceptance (p12).
It is a social epidemic of sorts, requiring:

Contagious agents to spread the message
Sticky ideas/messages/productions
An environment allowing the epidemic to spread

The Tipping point (an epidemic) is a function of (p18 & p29):

The Law of the Few: A tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work to build momentum (p19-21).
The Stickiness Factor: Stickiness means that a message makes an impact – it’s memorable (p25).
The Power of Context: Human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem (p29).

The Law of the Few

Word of mouth appeals have become the only kind of persuasion that most of us respond to anymore (p32).
The success of any social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts (p 33): Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.
- Connectors: People with a special gift for bring the world together (p38).
  - We don’t seek out friends. Proximity overpowers similarity; we associate with those who occupy the same spaces we do (p35).
  - A very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.
  - They manage to occupy many different worlds and subcultures (p47).
  - The acquaintance /“weak tie” – a friendly but casual social connection (p46).
  - The strength of weak ties represent a source of social power (p54)
- Mavens: Information specialists or “Market Mavens” (p 59)
  - Often pay close attention to price/quality differences in products.
  - Mavens want to help - which turns out to be an awfully effective way of getting someone’s attention (p 67).
  - Mavens are databanks – they provide the message
- Salesmen:: Those with the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing (p69).
  - Salesmen often employ non-verbal persuasion, but this is not necessarily intentional (p79).
  - One some level, salesmen cannot be resisted.
  - To make sense, salesmen must be present of very near the arrival of new information, or else they would be too late to be effective.

The Stickiness Factor

How retainable is the idea or desired behavior?
Is it memorable (p92)?
Is it practical and personal – how the idea fits in one’s life (p98)?
Is it novel?
Is there a “simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible? (p132)

The Power of Context

Behavior is a product of social context. In an unkempt environment, people are more apt to misbehave than in formal settings – broken windows theory (p150).
- Some situations (not necessarily environments) become so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions. The case in point was the Stanford prison experiment (p154).
- Traits (honesty?) become significantly influenced by the situation (p157).
Character Redefined: Character is a bundle of habits, tendencies, and interesting, loosely bound and dependent on circumstances and contexts (p163).
- The convictions of your heart and thoughts are less important in guiding your actions than the immediate context of your behavior – Example: seminary students would only help a needy individual when they had extra time/weren’t running late (p165).
- It is possible to be a better person on a clean street than in one littered with trash and graffiti (p168).

The Power of Context in Groups

Groups play a critical role in social epidemics
- In a group – we’re all more susceptible to peer pressure and social norms (p171).
- The skillful use of group power can spread a new idea.
- Groups are an environment where new beliefs can be practiced, expressed, and nourished (p173). Small-close knit groups are the most powerful in this regard (p174).
Rule of 150: Groups grow too large and loose cohesion at 150 (p179).
- The advantage of adhering to the rule of 150 is that you can exploit the bonds of memory and peer pressure to their maximum (p191).
To coordinate one contagious movement you often have to create many small movements first (p192).

Conclusions

First Lesson: Building a word-of-mouth epidemic requires focusing resources on your core innovators –connectors, mavens, and salesmen (p256).
Second Lesson: The world doesn’t accord with our intuitions. Those who successfully create social epidemics test their intuitions, rather than doing what they think is right. Most people cannot makes these leaps and often become distracters who insist on interpreting the world solely on their intuition (p258).
Change and Radical Transformation is possible. Given the right impetus, the world will cease to be the immovable, implacable place it seems to be.

Other Highlights

Throughout his book Gladwell expounds upon some very interesting, illustrative examples. While I felt they often exceeded what would have been required to make his various points – especially the 40 pages on children’s television –intellectually curious readers would probably find the discussions quite fascinating.

Newscaster Bias: Beginning on page 74, there is a great discussion of unconscious newscaster bias.
Charismatic People: Beginning on page 85, Gladwell reviews some research into how charismatic people are empowered to spread ideas and influence those around them.
Children's Television: From page 99 through 132, there is a rather lengthy discussion of how to develop successful children’s television programs, which includes some interesting notes on child psychology.
Broken Window Theory: Gladwell explores how NYC was able to use the power of context to discourage people from committing crimes - page 141.
Joint Memory Systems: On page 188, Gladwell begins a discussion of how close personal relationships can evolve into a joint memory system. The research highlighted demonstrates how a couple may grow to depend on each other's minds for memories they both use.

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