I’m going to be starting on Outliers in a few days. However, I wanted to do a review of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. The book revolves around the idea of Tipping Points, which comes from the world of epidemics and the people who study them; epidemiologists. Epidemics are are about idea, themes, rumous that go from being a fad to becoming mainstream.
The book has a great case study of an advertising agency who successfully started epidemics for Airwalk shoes back in the 90s. The main three points that Gladwell felt start an epidemic are:
1. The Law of the Few
2. The Stickiness Factor
3. The Power of Context
Within The Law of the Few there are three types of people Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. These three type of people are all involved in getting an epidemic started. Sometimes people can be more the one but people are rarely all three. For The Stickiness Factor & The Power of Context Malcolm goes into depth about how they relate to starting an epidemic and how making something memorable and the environment that the message is given in is just as important as the type of person that gives you the message. The Tipping Point was a great sequel to Blink and now I can’t wait to read Outliers.
