The Tipping Point "How little things can make a big difference"

Malcolm Gladwell defines the tipping point for social epidemics as a combination of little things accumulating until reaching a dramatic moment when everything changes all at once. Gladwell's research shows numerous case studies of the tipping point being reached such as:

- The children's program Blues Clues.
- New York City crime rates.
- The book called Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
- Gore Associates multi-million dollar high tech firm.
- Lester Wunderland "Secret Gold Box" with Columbia Record Club Account.
- The shoe brand Air Walk.
- Smoking.
- Paul Rever's message to the colonial militia to the approach of British Forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord.
- Tom Gau financial planner motor mimicry for persuasion.

The two simple questions that Gladwell answers in this book are:
1. Why is it that some ideas or behaviours or products start epidemics and others don't?
2. What can we do to deliberately to start and control positive epidemics of our own?
To answer these questions Gladwell provides us with:
The Three Rules of the Tipping Point - Law of the Few, Stickiness and the Power of Context.

Law of the Few 
The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of the few people with large social networks and how their messages are passed through word of mouth like wildfire. It attempts to classify three important types of people who affect the rapid spread of messages through the network. These three types of people are connectors, mavens, and salesmen.

- Connectors 

They are people with many friends and acquaintances who spend time maintaining these connections, from the network perspective, these are the most central nodes in the social network. These types of people are rare in society, as a result of their large network they have the ability to spread a message to a huge number of people quickly.

Case Study:
Paul Rever's story at the start of the American Revolution. Revere rode his famous “midnight ride” like a madman, and in every town he passed he knocked on doors, telling locals about the potential attack, and to spread the word to others. He knew everyone so his word spread like wildfire, whereas Willam Dawes did the same thing but didn't have the same affect as he was not a man of connections.

- Mavens

There are people who we rely on to connect us to other people, however there are also people we rely on to connect us with information, these people are information specialist, they are know as the mavens. Maven means one who accumulates knowledge and wants to help other people with it for no other reason than just to help someone, this turns out to be a very effective way of getting people's attention.

Case study: Doctors

- Salesmen

They are persuaders who are capable of propagating messages through the force of their character. Thus, regardless of the message content or their expertise in the area, they have a certain ability to sell which helps them move messages which may be of importance to them. This ability to persuade strangers to accept a message is why salesmen are important in tipping epidemics.

Case Study for you to research:

*Donald Moine, a behavioural psychologist, one of his studies was based on Tom Gau a millionaire success who sells financial planning services through motor mimicry techniques.

Stickiness 

What keeps people coming back for me. The stickiness factor says that messages must have a certain character which causes them to remain active in the recipients' minds. Moreover, they must be deemed worthy of being passed on. Gladwell admits that the exact characteristics of a message which make it sticky are very difficult to pin down. The stickiness of a message can often only be determined by testing and experimentation. The message must be repacked and tweaked several times before tiny changes cause the message to become sticky.

Case Studies:
*The children's program Blues Clues and sesame street.
*Lester Wunderland "Secret Gold Box" with Columbia Record Club Account.
*Smoking.

Power of Context

is a rule about the environment in which a message spreads. Small changes in the context of a message can determine whether or not it tips. Thus, these social epidemics can fail if the geographic location where they are introduced is wrong or if the current mental state of the population is not prepared for the message. Gladwell also points out the importance of small groups for the distribution of messages. He argues that the maximum number of members that can reasonably exist in a human group is one hundred and fifty. He believes that biological limitations in our brain mean that any group larger than this will automatically segment into factions and decrease efficiency. The existence of small groups helps the spread of a message because each member of the group knows every other one and thus the message can easily diffuse through the whole group.

Case Studies:
* New York City crime rates.
* The book called Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
* Gore Associates multi-million dollar high tech firm.