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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
DIAMOND
RATING
RATING
Malcolm Gladwell Little, Brown, 2000
Senteo’s Review 
The Tipping Point is one of Canadian author Malcolm Gladwell’s best-known works. In it, Gladwell seeks to explain mysterious sociological changes – specifically, how it is possible for momentous, dramatic changes to happen seemingly overnight. He points out that while explanations centered on long-term trends have plenty of merit, in the short term any of these processes produces only incremental change and cannot by themselves explain any sudden, dramatic changes.
Gladwell argues that all sudden shifts, adoption of new ideas and trends, and so on, are just like epidemics. Ideas, products, messages and behaviors spread exactly like viruses do.
Gladwell outlines a framework consisting of three elements, each of which contributes to making rapid change happen. He terms these:
- The Law of the Few – transmission of ideas and messages is made possible by the involvement of people with specific social skills, whose involvement matters more than the involvement of ordinary people. These people are further split into 3 categories:
- Connectors – people with a large number of acquaintances and friends, who are naturally very connected, crucially outside their traditional sphere of comfort
- Mavens – people who tend to accumulate useful knowledge and share it with others
- Salesmen – people who have the charisma and forcefulness to persuade others to adopt new ideas or change their minds about something.
- The Stickiness Factor – how quickly stickiness can be improved with relatively minor changes to structuring and presentation of information. This makes the idea ‘catchier’.
- The Power of Context – Human behavior – and thus how likely they are to adopt new ideas – is very sensitive to its environment. Therefore, external factors can either encourage or hinder the adoption of new ideas and behaviors.
Gladwell uses a rich variety of examples to illustrate his theory. He includes examples ranging from the adoption of certain brands (Hush Puppy shoes) to STI outbreaks in urban centres, to children’s television programmes.
Gladwell’s book is characteristically well-written and engaging. The ideas that Gladwell expressed in this book are very compelling and are useful for anyone seeking to bring about changes and transformation – especially in large organizations, where getting in touch with everyone would be challenging, and therefore it would be wise to focus on getting the message through to the ‘special few’.
While well written, Gladwell’s methodology is not very scientific – he uses only those examples that illustrate his theories and does not subject his ideas to much scrutiny; moreover, the validity and universality of some of his examples have been called into question by several of his reviewers. However, this review would argue that criticising individual examples or Gladwell’s methodology does not detract from the overall validity of his ideas. We are, however, left with a desire for a more coherent methodology.
In this brilliant and original book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analyses the ‘tipping point’, that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.
This book is useful reading for anyone who seeks to realise changes or transformations in practice, as it offers valuable insight into how ideas or trends can spread. Gladwell’s ‘Law of the Few’ should be of particular interest to anyone seeking to realise change in a large organization – it explains clearly why ideas spread more effectively when they are targeted at a small group of socially connected and influential people (in this case, influential within the organization), and why this is more effective than attempting to convert everyone at once. However, Gladwell’s framework is largely theoretical, and thus we would recommend consulting Senteo’s courses on Organizational Change and Evolution as well.
Senteo Subject Category
The authors of The Experience Economy provide a well-structured and sound theoretical understanding of the customer experience and its importance in today’s economy. Their framework for understanding also provides a framework which is directly applicable in development, justification and implementation planning.
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