The Tipping Point
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Ratings436
Average rating3.8
Key takeaways:
- Connectors know a vast number of people and serve as hubs for social networks. They naturally bring different groups together. This makes them critical in spreading ideas.
- Mavens are informations specialists. They accumulate knowledge or spot trends and love sharing it with others. They influence others by providing reliable, persuasive information that helps people make decisions.
- Salespeople are charismatic and can persuade others to act. They amplify the appeal of an idea or product, making it more attractive and convincing to others.
Example: A Maven identifies a new product or trend. The Connector spreads this information to a wide and diverse audience, building a base of early adopters. The Salesperson helps persuade hesitant individuals to adopt it, drastically increasing the uptake.
All three are necessary to create an epidemic.
- A good salesperson
This is my first Malcolm Gladwell book, and I can see why his books are so popular. He is able to take complex social psychology and explain it in very readable and understandable ways. Continually as I was reading this book, I would think about the experiences I was having in everyday life and how they relate to tipping points. Fascinating and useful.
All creators want to see their finished products get broad attention. This book investigates that illusive point where things fall in line, momentum begins to build and success is inevitable. Like with other Gladwell books, The Tipping Point is peppered with stories that seem unrelated at first, but are always brought back to the central theme (something I wish I was as good at). It's an entertaining book, and an informative book, but I felt it was missing a way to FIND a tipping point.
All creators want to see their finished products get broad attention. This book investigates that illusive point where things fall in line, momentum begins to build and success is inevitable. Like with other Gladwell books, The Tipping Point is peppered with stories that seem unrelated at first, but are always brought back to the central theme (something I wish I was as good at). It's an entertaining book, and an informative book, but I felt it was missing a way to FIND a tipping point.
I marked this book TBR almost 6 years ago. In the intervening time, I think Gladwell's revolutionary idea became the conventional wisdom. Still, I always enjoy listening to him speak. I enthusiastically recommend his podcast, Revisionist History. I just wish he released more than a handful of episodes per year.
I loved the ideas from epidemiology being applied to social behaviours. After all they describe very similar things. The deconstruction of it, concepts of connectors, mavens, etc. makes you really think about it and try to find such people within your circle of friends. All in whole it has this fantastic quality which I love in good books - you start to notice new things in your everyday life. Also worth to notice is the fact, that Gladwell is a great storyteller and makes it a really easy read without being simplistic.
The world is a much more interesting place thanks to people like Malcolm Gladwell, who make things look less prosaic or mundane.
It's standard Gladwell; fascinating sociological insights into how peculiar things happen and why people follow one another even in the most extreme of cases (his case studies on how Hush Puppies were tipped by a bunch of cool kids in East Village, the connections between high-school shootings post Columbine, and wide-spread pseudo-sickness, and how all these areas are heavily influenced via the most unlikely of things were particularly fascinating) It took a while to get into his train of thought, at least longer than [b:Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking 40102 Blink The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440763417s/40102.jpg 1180927] - but once that happened is was a joyous as any given Gladwell book/podcast/listen. 3 and a half stars.
This is a very good book that introduce some rather powerful concepts with interesting examples. Towards the end it gets a little confusing when the author tries too hard to fit reality into his framework, but that's forgivable. The afterwords at the end doesn't really add anything but it is just a few minutes read...
Focusing on a particular set of things, this book explores how an epidemic (of things, ideas etc) spreads voraciously or “tips”. The argument made is quite convincing but this is, by no means, a wild page turner. Some sections are pretty interesting, others you can just skim over and not lose track of anything. All things said, things flow pretty neatly into each other and the idea presented is tied up into a nice, cohesive book.
Malcolm has an uncanny ability to take a lot and summarize it with anecdotes. The Tipping Point is a pretty good book on how ideas spread and essential reading for anyone in marketing.
There are undoubtedly some problems with Gladwell's analysis, but the ideas are interesting enough, and explained concisely enough to warrant four stars, I think.
