The Tipping Point Summary

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The Tipping Point. – Malcolm Gladwell Abacus publishing – ISBN 0 349 11346 7 In May 2000 Malcolm Gladwell, a journalist for the Washington Post, published a book called ‘The Tipping Point’. It was to revolutionise our thinking about change. It was based on years of study about changes in society. He looked at such cases as Hush Puppies – a brand that was in terminal decline but recovered to their highest sales ever within two years. He looked at the crime epidemic in New York City in the mid 90’s, which rose dramatically year after year, but then suddenly fell by 65% in one year. Through these and many other studies Malcolm Gladwell drew some conclusions about change that led us to re-think some of our key beliefs regarding change. He related his findings on change to epidemics, and discovered that three factors impact on change: 1. Contagiousness Some interventions in change seem to ‘catch’. They seem to pass from person to person at great speed, often with no real visible means of detecting how this happens. 2. Little causes can have big effects. We are conditioned to think that to make big changes we need to make big interventions. Actually a well placed small change can have expediential results. 3. Change is gradual only to a point, once this point is reached (The Tipping Point), change then happens at a dramatic pace. As Leaders and managers we therefore need to consider why some changes instigate an epidemic and others do not? Epidemics are a function of: θ the people who transmit infectious agents (“The Law of the Few”) θ the infectious agent itself (“The Stickiness Factor”) θ the environment in which the agent is functioning (“The Power of Context”) He goes on to draw our attention to the three principal factors that influence the tipping point:- 1. The law of the few 2. The stickiness factor 3. The Power of

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