Wednesday, March 22, 2017

The Tipping Point Review


The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell discusses and explains how some ideas become trends and why others don’t. Gladwell, through the use of many comparisons and research compares how some ideas affect the society differently than others. In many instances he compares the characteristics of social change to a medical epidemic. The tipping point, as Gladwell proclaims, is when an idea or trend becomes a popular phenomenon at an extremely fast rate.
            Throughout the book Gladwell uses different situations to illustrate his point. He discusses why teenage smoking is still popular even though the negative effects are still known. Through different comparisons Gladwell describes the process of an idea gaining popularity and reaching it’s “tipping point.”
In a world where ideas are spreading like wildfire, some ideas gain popularity and some die off before they ever come to life. Gladwell makes the point that if you look at every successful trend they are more similar than you may think. Gladwell breaks down the “rules of epidemics” into three separate parts to determine if an idea will gain popularity and become a social trend. The three parts include the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context.
The Law of the Few is the first rule in which only a few people are responsible for spreading a single idea. This is later compared to only a few people being held responsible for the spreading of STD’s to various others. These are the people who help the trends start and continue to spread. They are the people who start to gain popularity in small groups. If people continue to stand behind a product or idea it is more likely to be successful.
The idea behind The Stickiness Factor is that an idea continues to influence people’s behavior. Gladwell uses different children TV shows such as “Blue’s Clues” and “Sesame Street” to explain this phenomenon. Research that showed the logic, reasoning and literacy improvement helped the show to “stick.” It’s what gets people to continue to be attached to an idea or product.
The last idea, the Power of Context, is important to the future of an idea or product. Gladwell claims this is crucial to an idea gaining popularity and reaching the tipping point. He compares the Power of Context to the decrease in crime rates in 1990s New York City. The idea behind this factor is that various changes, big or small, can make change societies behavior. In his comparison to the crime rate, Gladwell believes that because city authorities made minor improvements to the city in turn led to a decline in the crime rates.
The main idea behind Gladwell’s research is figuring out how to get your ideas and products to influence change in society. In the book the process behind what makes ideas either succeed or fail is investigated extensively. Different factors and social patterns play a role in how successful an idea may be. The end goal of everyone’s idea should be to have his or her idea reach the tipping point.


No comments:

Post a Comment