Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Based on Jamie’s and few other friends’ recommendations, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. I found it to be a pretty interesting and fast read, with lots of good anecdotal evidence. But I noticed that the anecdotes weren’t always followed with thorough explanations or proofs. So I often found myself muttering, “Correlation doesn’t imply causation.”

The book is written in a very readable and accessible way, but sometimes is overly repetitive or presents irrelevant info. As lots of people have pointed out in the Amazon.com reviews, the very well known idea of yawns being contagious takes pages to explain while repeating the word “yawn” many, many times. The irony, though, is wonderful. :-)

The main premise is that “ideas” can be spread as “viruses”. This in itself is a pretty old and established concept (for example, it’s an important part of Snowcrash). After all, if viruses are spread with people coming into contact with each other, and ideas are spread by people coming into contact with each other, it seems to follow that they would have similar characteristics.

Gladwell’s points are that an epidemic needs the following:

1. The right Few: In spreading an idea, you need the right people: the “connectors” and “mavens” that can spread the idea.
2. Stickiness: The idea needs to be sticky or memorable.
3. The right Context: The idea needs to be presented in the right context.

Again, these ideas are nothing new or special. But the “anecdotes” in the book are generally pretty interesting.

The first section about the “Few” has the same information presented in Never Eat Alone: some people are more connected than others (the Connectors), some people know lots of things (the Mavens), and some people are good at selling ideas/products (the Salesmen). Apparently Ferrazzi read Tipping Point before writing his book. :-)

From this idea, came the usual conclusions: the rich get richer since they know the right people to get things done, etc. Gladwell also talks a lot about how people influence others, including both verbal and non-verbal communication and talks about some relevant studies.

For Stickiness, Gladwell had a long discussion about how the children’s shows Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues were developed. There was lots of good information on early childhood development, techniques for measuring retention, and general childhood education. While I find the subject matter very interesting on its own, these ancedotes didn’t directly address the issue at hand. I was left with knowing that’s important for your idea to be “sticky”, but not much else.

Lastly, Gladwell discusses the power of context; specifically how the environment can affect people’s actions. His main examples are crime rate drop in New York City during the ’90s and various experiments with normal people acting as prisoners and guards.

Gladwell explains that NYC crime drop had a lot to do with how enforcement of small laws (like graffiti or subway tolls), changed the environmental context so that there was less of a crime-filled feeling around the city. While this is certainly part of it, I think the explanation in Freakonomics is much more thorough (I’ll write about it later). Also, the experiments Gladwell mentions are interesting, but are mostly well known ones that would part of any Psychology 101 textbook.

Overall, I thought Tipping Point was a good read and worth getting from the library. I wouldn’t buy it, as I don’t plan on reading it again. While the main ideas are straight-forward and aren’t new, the anecdotes are interesting and worth thinking about.