The Tipping Point

Finished reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell recently. It's a very interesting book, although I didn't really buy the author's argument.

The point of the book is that ideas often don't gain acceptance gradually, but rather reach a certain point -- The Tipping Point -- where they zoom from being accepted by just a few people to being accepted by lots of people very quickly.

The really interesting part of the book are the case studies of ideas that really took off. The author gives a whole interesting history of Paul Revere's ride that describes how Revere knew everyone and was very prominent in the Boston community, so, when someone heard British troops talking about going to seize the rebels' guns, they told Revere. He headed out to tell people about it and basically knew everyone on the way to Lexington and Concord, so they listened to him and were ready for the British redcoats. Gladwell contrasts Revere's set uccess with the response to William Dawes, who rode in the opposite direction and basically didn't gmuch response at all. Dawes didn't know everyone, so they didn't respond. Didn't know all of that.

Gladwell describes how the creators of both Sesame Street and Blue's Clues worked very hard to format their shows' presentations so that little kids would pay attention. As someone whose children have absorbed a lot of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues -- we have had very well-loved Elmoes and both kids wore themselves some serious Steve shirts -- I can tell you that they were very successful. There was great joy in our house when Baby Paprika arrived and it was quite an event when Steve went off to college and Joe became Blue's guardian, master, owner, landlord, whatever.

On the whole, though, the book's argument wasn't especially persuasive. It makes sense that ideas take off quickly at a certain point. Things reach critical mass and take off. (I don't know why Gladwell didn't use the term "critical mass" instead of the term "tipping point." I'm guessing that Gladwell wanted to use his own term, although it gets kind of irritating because he insists on capitalizing it. We get it, ideas have Tippings Points.) Gladwell says that three factors cause ideas to take off: (1) unique people who move ideas very broadly (Connectors), who discover ideas (Mavens) or are especially convincing in promoting ideas (Salesmen); (2) the "stickiness" of the ideas, how appealing their presentation is; and (3) the context in which they are presented. OK, all of that makes sense.

But Gladwell doesn't explain very well how these factors all fit together. He seems to say that any one of these things can be enough to make an idea take off. But he never actually says that or argues why it is. He presents all kinds of different Salesmen without much explanation. He presents the world's most persuasive financial advisor and people who look really cool smoking as his main examples of Salesmen. Huh? He presents both the decision of Blue's Clues' creators to show the same show every day for a week and the fact that nicotine affects people's brain chemistry as examples of the "stickiness" of things that becomes epidemics. Huh? I can only remember New York City's emphasis on "broken windows" crimes like subway-fare-jumping and vandalism as a major factor in the dramatic drop in crime there as an example of the Importance of Context (again, capitals) presented by Gladwell.

So Gladwell probably is right that ideas reach a point of acceptance where they take off like rockets and makes an interesting presentation of things that have done so. He doesn't do a great job of explaining why they take off.