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

The Tipping Point offers an intriguing perspective on how buying trends, social trends, and other patterns of behavior occur as a result of a few people: connectors, mavens, and salesmen. I think the author supports his claim really well with the data he draws on. I found the book intriguing because the author makes the concepts easy to follow and shows how societal trends are shaped by just a few people who help tip the rest of us to what those trends are.

From Paul Revere to Hush Puppies to Blues Clues to Bernie Goetz, Malcom Gladwell's examples run the gamut to explain the principle of The Tipping Point. Everything has a tipping point, whether you're rousing the troops, selling shoes or fighting crime. A fascinating journey in to the culture of our times - why some messages take off and others fall flat; why "word of mouth" only works if the word is in the right mouth; how one slight change in an ad, a message, a product, etc. can turn a snowflake into an avalanche. This is not just a book about advertising but about life itself. It's simple common sense, but Malcolm Gladwell puts it into words, context and examples that make you sit back and say, "Ahhhhh. I get it." Powerful, powerful stuff.

The Tipping Point was a very, very, good book. The only thing that kept it from being perfect is that there's really only a half-book's worth of material here, so the author basically expanded what could have been written in 100 pages to a longer book format, just so we would think we're getting our money's worth. Very considerate, but probably not necessary.

There are few books that introduce a new idea that can be applied to multiple disciplines - The Tipping Point is a thought-provoking and well-written book in that category. This book contains more than an idea: it introduces a new way of understanding what often seems like major changes that appear to come from little or often unknown effort. It attempts to answer an obvious question: Why do some ideas, products, fads, and behaviors just seem to explode into popularity, while others-- which may be equally worthy-- just don't? Malcolm Gladwell's answer is that "epidemics" of popularity are the result of the operation of three agents: The Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. He delivers the evidence that backs up what he is saying, and he makes everything clear and entertaining. He uses concrete examples that really bring home his points, even the ones that at first just don't "add up" because conventional thinking tells you the opposite must be true. As a whole, this book is one of those rare gems that make you truly THINK about the world around you in a whole new way. It has simple ideas about certain kinds of people and psychological truths that spread "epidemics" of change and trends that can be applied to many complex situations. It can give you insight that you never had before on baffling or "roadblocked" issues.

This book asserts that the best way to understand popularity and social behavior, such as the rise in popularity of a book, teen behaviors, or word of mouth phenomena, is to model them as epidemics. The author suggests that ideas, behaviors, and the popularity of products spread like viruses, and that changes often occur quickly and unexpectedly. Small changes often result in larger changes and spread until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, thereby causing a larger more dramatic effect than might have been predicted.

Why is it that some people seem to have more power to influence mass thinking than others? The author says that word-of-mouth epidemics are stimulated by people with certain personality types: 1. sociable people who bring others together are called Connectors, 2. people who are adept at disseminating knowledge are called Mavens, and 3. people able to persuade are called Salesmen. Some people have more than one quality. This book brings to mind for me how frightening it is that we as humans are so easily manipulated by social dynamics and crowd mentality. The book will make you think about social dynamics, fads, and group behavior, and give you insight as to how these can be manipulated. Author of THE 3:00 PM SECRET: Live Slim and Strong, Live Your Dreams