You can't help feeling that when Malcolm Gladwell was a schoolboy,
his teachers probably described him as 'too clever by half'. This
is a very clever book indeed, but whether its central thesis holds
water or not is another matter. Gladwell's argument is simple. He
believes that social epidemics, like disease epidemics, can be
caused by very small and apparently insignificant events. There's a
'tipping point' at which a particular phenomenon, whether it's an
idea like Methodism or a fashion like the unexpected trend for
wearing Hush Puppies in the mid-1990s, suddenly becomes an
epidemic. Overnight, everyone is doing it. There are three rules
which make something 'tip', according to Gladwell. He has named
these the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of
Context. The Law of the Few says that certain people are good at
spreading ideas - without those people on board, the idea won't
spread. The Stickiness Factor says, in essence, that there has to
be something about the idea or fashion that makes it 'stick' - that
makes it memorable. And the Power of Context pretty much boils down
to the idea that you have to be in the right place at the right
time. You can have a great message and great people to spread the
message but if you're trying to sell snow to Eskimos, then you're
not going to succeed. It's a compelling argument, and Gladwell uses
lots of engaging examples to illustrate his point - the success of
Sesame Street, the reduction in violent crime in New York, the rise
in cigarette smoking in teenagers. The book is lightly peppered
with research findings from social psychologists that back up his
argument. It's easy to read, presents a seductively simple idea we
can all understand and relate to, and flatters the reader by
suggesting that the thesis is backed by academic research. It's
'sticky', all right. Unfortunately, it's also very glib. There are
no shades of grey - nothing that suggests there are ever any flaws
in the thesis. After all, what if a phenomenon has all the rules
Gladwell identifies and still doesn't create an epidemic? How would
we know? There are elements to the argument that are tautological.
How do we know a message is 'sticky'? Well, because it sticks. And
why does it stick? Because it's 'sticky', of course. Perhaps the
most striking aspect of the glibness comes when Gladwell cites
academic research to back up his views. For example, he argues that
there's a correlation between smoking and depression - that
depressed people smoke because smoking prompts their brain to
produce chemicals such as serotonin that regulate happiness. In
other words, they are treating their own depression. But this is
dangerously over-simplifying a complicated area. There are other
explanations for the correlation, including the possibility that
smoking is what makes people depressed in the first place. This is
undoubtedly a very enjoyable book. It's thought-provoking too, and
readers will no doubt come up with their own examples of phenomena
that have 'tipped'. But it's worth reading with a critical mind -
it's not all quite as straightforward as Gladwell would have us
believe. (Kirkus UK)
"The Tipping Point" is the biography of an idea, and the idea is
quite simple: that many of the problems we face - from murder to
teenage delinquency to traffic jams - behave like epidemics. They
aren't linear phenomena in the sense that they steadily and
predictably change according to the level of effort brought to bear
against them. They are capable of sudden and dramatic changes in
direction. Years of well-intentioned intervention may have no
impact at all, yet the right intervention - at just the right time
- can start a cascade of change. Many of the social ills that face
us today, in other words, are as inherently volatile as the
epidemics that periodically sweep through the human population:
little things can cause them to "tip" at any time and if we want to
understand how to confront and solve them we have to understand
what those "tipping points" are. In this study, Malcolm Gladwell
explores the ramifications of this. Not simply for politicians and
policy-makers, his method provides a way of viewing everyday
experience and seeking to enable us to develop strategies for
everything from raising a child to running a company.
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