2008 Woodie Awards
Torch Reads
The Tipping Point
Sean Mcgrath, Staff Writer
Issue date: 4/23/08 Section: Features
Epidemic. When most people hear that word, they think of an illness or a disease spreading throughout a population like wildfire.
There was an influenza epidemic in 1918 that killed fifty million people worldwide. What if sickness wasn't the only thing that spread through society like an epidemic? What if ideas, trends, and social behaviors spread in the same manner as an epidemic?
This is what Malcolm Gladwell argues in his book, The Tipping Point. In 1918, only a few people caught the flu.
As time progressed, more and more people slowly were infected with the virus until, suddenly, there was a tipping point and the flu spread over the entire world incredibly fast. Gladwell shows that ideas, trends, and social behaviors act in the same way.
In fact, he seeks to answer two important questions: Why is it that some ideas or products start epidemics while some do not and what can we do to purposely start and control positive epidemics of our own?
Gladwell has come up with three rules of epidemics and The Tipping Point is conveniently broken down in such a way that each rule has its own chapter followed by two case studies.
Each chapter is full of real-life examples and stories that demonstrate Gladwell's theory.
The first rule is The Law of the Few. Social epidemics require the involvement of a particular group of people with a rare set of social skills.
Gladwell calls these people Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.
Each one of these people has a different skill that is useful in creating a social epidemic. A Connector is someone who knows an unusually high number of people from all different walks of life. A Maven is an expert in a particular area, such as cars.
What makes a Maven different is that it is more than an expert because an expert merely studies cars because he loves cars.
A Maven studies cars because he loves cars, but also because he loves you and wants to help you in your decision of which car to buy.
There was an influenza epidemic in 1918 that killed fifty million people worldwide. What if sickness wasn't the only thing that spread through society like an epidemic? What if ideas, trends, and social behaviors spread in the same manner as an epidemic?
This is what Malcolm Gladwell argues in his book, The Tipping Point. In 1918, only a few people caught the flu.
As time progressed, more and more people slowly were infected with the virus until, suddenly, there was a tipping point and the flu spread over the entire world incredibly fast. Gladwell shows that ideas, trends, and social behaviors act in the same way.
In fact, he seeks to answer two important questions: Why is it that some ideas or products start epidemics while some do not and what can we do to purposely start and control positive epidemics of our own?
Gladwell has come up with three rules of epidemics and The Tipping Point is conveniently broken down in such a way that each rule has its own chapter followed by two case studies.
Each chapter is full of real-life examples and stories that demonstrate Gladwell's theory.
The first rule is The Law of the Few. Social epidemics require the involvement of a particular group of people with a rare set of social skills.
Gladwell calls these people Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.
Each one of these people has a different skill that is useful in creating a social epidemic. A Connector is someone who knows an unusually high number of people from all different walks of life. A Maven is an expert in a particular area, such as cars.
What makes a Maven different is that it is more than an expert because an expert merely studies cars because he loves cars.
A Maven studies cars because he loves cars, but also because he loves you and wants to help you in your decision of which car to buy.
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