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

Rating:
Summary: Beguiling nonsense
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Great theory AND a great read...
Review: If you are engaged in ANY kind of human organization, or just like to know how isolated events take on a life of their own, read The Tipping Point.

Gladwell's work is detailed, yet easy to read. You will come away with a clear understanding of the term that has now worked its way into common speech.

Rating:
Summary: good stuff
Review: If you need more check out www.antiventurecapital.com for startup manual for entrepreneurs who are unable or unwilling to tap venture capital.

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Summary: The science of Big Bird
Review: This book, at its heart is about the theoretical "tipping point", but it is also a pretty cool compendium of interesting information. Including things such as:

-The counter-intuitive method NYC used to lower the crime rate.
-The incredible amount of developmental psychology work that went into creating shows like Sesame Street and Blues Clues.
-How suicide and smoking are as contagious as fashion fads.
-Why Paul Revere's ride was successful, but not William Dawes, who did the same thing on the same night.
-How spouses, or even close groups of people tend to use their collective memory as one unit.

Rating:
Summary: A Drawn Out Way to Make Its Point
Review: The underlying premise of the book is that socio-economic and political phenomenon often can be explained by analogy to an infectious disease. Something - the apparent resurgence of Hush Puppy shoes among "hip" people, is one example the author provides - seems to come out of nowhere and can't be explained by conventional cause and effect. That is, the Hush Puppy company was not promoting the product but youthful, New York City "trend setters" found them in thrift shops, their friends and "followers" started wearing them and demand skyrocketed in an exponential fashion. The natural phenomena that best explain this are epidemics; they start small with a few victims and then can spread rapidly to millions of people.

Gladwell's basic premise is a useful construct for understanding some social-economic phenomena. And any student of history knows that relatively few people can make enormous changes, with Christ and his original 12 disciples being the most dramatic instance. But Gladwell takes much too much space to drag out the same basic point. One chapter of nauseating detail about the evolution of the children's television program Sesame Street is the most pointlessly drawn out part of the book. Also Gladwell relies solely on anecdotal evidence with little statistical support and no original research.

If you can find a magazine article on this topic - and it sounds like some of the chapters are reworked articles - you may learn all you need. The writing is well done; there are no charts or graphs to illustrate the principles. I'd give it two-and-a-half stars if that was possible.

Rating:
Summary: Exponential or Gradual Growth?
Review: Perhaps the first thing one can say about this book is that it challenges our fundamental assumptions as well as our innate conception of reality. In plain English, this book tells us that life is not a gradual process, that the phenomen which we experience in our day to day routines are not built up, but rather that the world in which we live has become this way as a result of epidemics and exponential growth.

Above all this book is management theory at its best and trend analysis at its worst. Gladwell discusses how one can really create an epidemic or change the ways of the world whether it be the crime rate or the number of people who smoke. He argues that in every trend there is a tipping point, a point at which an otherwise common growth turns into an explosion.

Gladwell uses psychology and market research studies to show that the world is not in fact gradual but is rather exponential. He bases his arguments on the law of the few, the stickiness factor and what he calls the power of context.

Gladwell's book can be broken down into three basic parts. A guide on how to use people to spread an epidemic. A guide on how to tweak one's message to make sure that it is an epidemic worth spreading, and finally a guide on how to use context to make sure that the first two steps actually work. This book is revolutionary in that it teaches one how to create and distribute a product, whether that product be a pair of shoes or breast cancer awareness.

Gladwell fails when he tries to analyze smoking and the tipping point of this phenomen but overall he succeeds in that he provides a counterweight to the prevailing business idea that suggests that greatness is built over time and not exponentially grown. This book is an easy read and a pleasant one at that. Should you disagree with Gladwell, this book will still be useful as a topic of discussion at the dinner table or your next cocktail party. However, should you agree with Gladwell, this book may aid you where it matters, in the boardroom and perhaps even in your daily life.

Rating:
Summary: Proportionally Epidemic
Review: Journalist Malcolm Gladwell has put together what is easily one of the most readable books about social phenomena out right now. Borrowing by analogy from epidemiology, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference is a clear, concise analysis of social epidemics and why they "tip" ("The Tipping Point" is the name given to the moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass). Gladwell says, "If you talk to the people who study epidemics - epidemiologists - you realize that they have a strikingly different way of looking at the world. They don't share the assumptions the rest of us have about how and why change happens."

After studying tipping points in epidemics, Gladwell decided to look for them in other places. He found them in Wolverine's Hush Puppy shoe sales, Paul Revere's midnight ride, the child-captivating shows of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues and the most relevant analysis of teen smoking I've yet to read, among other things. Gladwell also covers case studies of people who have successfully manipulated Tipping Points by launching their own epidemic campaigns.

By breaking down the elements of epidemics into easily understandable pieces and processes, Malcolm Gladwell has written what could almost be considered a metamarketing sourcebook. As he says, "The point is that by the end of the book I think the reader will have a clear idea of what starting an epidemic actually takes. This is not an abstract, academic book. It's very practical. And it's very hopeful. It's brain software."

Rating:
Summary: An important book for visionaries
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: This book is filled with great stories. I love the story about the NYC train system. I grew up during the 1980's and I remember being afraid to ride the subways. I recall watching people jump the turnstiles like there was no tomorrow. Even people that were considered honest nice guys would jump, because everyone else was doing it. When the police first started cracking down on these guys, I couldn't believe it, little did I know that I was watching the tipping point of the whole quality of life for a NY straphanger commuter. Because once the police started doing this, many problems that were much bigger--went away on their own.

This is just one story, there are many more great stories like this-in this really great book. I highly recommended it.

Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated

Rating:
Summary: interesting but gets off track
Review: Interesting book but spends a lot of time on what seems to be child psychology and testing of TV shows as opposed to the tipping point subject.