Book Review: The Tipping Point

To some of you the name of Malcolm Gladwell is familiar from his talk at SxSW 2005. He was a reporter at the Washington Post between 1987 and 1996, and has since been a staff writer at The New Yorker. I’ve learned about him for the first time while studying the list of SxSW 2005 sessions.

In his book, The Tipping Point, the author offers his vision of how contagious ideas take roots. To be more precise, we’re talking about fashion trends, epidemics, social behaviors. He cites numerous quite amusing studies backed by statistics and offers his opinion why things “tipped” at one point or another. You can easily apply the same ideas to your own business, should you run one.

This book was a great relief to my brain after it was toasted by hours of reading a book on tuning indexes in SQL Server 2000. Like many authors, who pitch their version of how the world ticks, Malcolm Gladwell coins a couple of terms (Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen) and juggles them all along, so you need to read from the very beginning to grasp his lingo.

Often times his assertions are way too exaggerated. For example, I still can’t see how Bernie Goetz’s shooting of four black gangsters (Gladwell loves playing the racial card!) on a New York subway train sparked astonishing decline in crime rates in the mid-eighties and cut 2,000 murders and 600,000 felonies per year down by 75% by the end of the decade.

At times Gladwell wanders too far away from the topic just to come back to it later, but you feel bewildered by the amount of persuasive statistics he throws your way in-between. It would’ve helped if he stayed closer to the subject.

I also noticed the author gives businesses—whose ideas and concepts skyrocket to success—too little credit. Crediting “mavens”, “connectors” and “salesmen” with catapulting companies to fame and glory just by spreading good word about them is a bit of a stretch.

What I truly enjoyed, though, was a discussion of Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues in Chapter 3. If you are a parent and spend any time with your child teaching him or her, you will find this one chapter truly illuminating. I was amazed at what length the producers of both shows went to make their message “stick” with kids. Interesting research stats reveal extraordinary things about kids’ ability to learn. As to me, I’m always on the lookout for this kind of information.

Conclusion

This book gives you valuable food for thought and the next time you see mass hysteria rising (Ajax, for example) you’ll be able recognize the “tipping point” and trace it back to its roots.

Overall, Malcolm Gladwell delivers his point quite well: little things can make a big difference! I do recommend this book, but if you’re looking for a more balanced study and less of exaggerated sales talk, nothing beats Good to Great. And I mean nothing!

I'm amazed at the amount of books you read. Your my hero! I can't even keep up with my blog feeds or even write as many of my own blog posts as I would like.

Sounds like a good read but since I have to be pretty judicious of the books I read, I'm not sure this one will make my list of books to read any time real soon.

I'm a book junkie. :) You're right---this is not a life saving book and not an extemely urgent read, although an educational one.

I also really liked the Tipping Point.

Gladwell's next book, "Blink" is also a very good.

-Scott