The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
3-Sentence Summary:
It is useful to think of things like emerging fashion trends, crimes waves, bestselling book phenomenons, increases in types behaviours, and various other societal changes as epidemics, which have a tipping point, at which everything starts to spread at an exponential rate.
These epidemics and their tipping points rely on ‘The Law of the Few’ (Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen spreading the message), ‘The Stickiness Factor’ (how memorable and appealing the message is), and ‘The Power of Context (The times and places in which the epidemics occur).
We can use the knowledge of these elements in our pursuit of creating social epidemics with our ideas, innovations, important information, businesses, etc, but also in intervening in those epidemics that we don't want to spread.
Notes:
It is useful to think of things like emerging fashion trends, crimes waves, bestselling book phenomenons, increases in types behaviours, and various other societal changes as epidemics. Ideas and behaviours spread just like viruses do.
Epidemics generally do not happen at a gradual linear rate. Instead, they tend to simmer beneath the surface until a certain 'tipping point', a dramatic moment when everything changes.
Epidemics often happen naturally, but there are things we can do to purposely try to create them.
There are 3 rules that lead to the tipping point: The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context.
'The Law of the Few' - There are a small number of people who are responsible for most of the change when it comes to bringing an epidemic to its tipping point. These people can be separated into Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.
Connectors are those people who have a huge number of social connections. By virtue of the number of people they know from various backgrounds, they act as a link from us to many other people, which is advantageous for spreading new information and ideas, since those who we are already connected to are more likely to share the same information and ideas as us already. Word-of-mouth epidemics rely on Connectors.
Mavens are those who accumulate information about specific topics. They create the message that connectors then go and spread.
The third group, Salesmen, possess the skills to persuade those who are up until now unconvinced. These skills can be learnt, but often come naturally to a small select few people, and are often extremely subtle.
'The Stickiness Factor' refers to how the information is delivered, how memorable it is, and whether, as a result, people spread it, act on it, think about it, or not. This is generally a result of subconscious factors.
In order to make an idea 'sticky', tinkering and observation of how people react is required. This is done with children's TV shows, for example, such as Sesame Street, where they purposely change elements of the show, observed how children watch the show, and adapt the future features of the show as a result.
'The Power of Context' - Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur. E.g. A town with broken windows is more likely to have more windows broken in the future, but also likely to have more crime, as a result of the message that acceptance of broken windows gives. In this case, the environment is responsible for the epidemic of crime, rather than people.
Another example is Zimbardo's prison experiment, where people were assigned to pretend to be either prisoners or guards. After a few days, the people who were assigned as guards found themselves behaving in cruel ways that they could never have imagined.
Other examples include various fashion trends, the increase in smoking, the spread of diseases like Syphilis, and suicide in various cultures.
We can use the knowledge of these elements in our pursuit of creating social epidemics with our ideas, innovations, important information, businesses, etc, but also in intervening in those epidemics that we don't want to spread.
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