| This celebrated bestseller, now in paperback, is a book that is changing the way Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas. The new Afterword by the author describes how readers can constructively apply the tipping point principle in their own lives and work.
The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a sick individual in a crowded store can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend or the popularity of a new restaurant to take off overnight -- or crime or drug use to taper off. Gladwell has explored this theory to great acclaim in several articles in The New Yorker. Here, he shows how very minor adjustments in products and ideas can make them more likely to become hugely popular. He reveals how easy it is to cause group behavior to tip in a desirable direction by making small changes in our immediate environment.
What makes The Tipping Point exceptional:
- It contains a profoundly hopeful idea that people will embrace for its sense and simplicity: one imaginative person, applying a well-placed lever, can move the world.
- Examples are recognizable: in the New York subways, removing graffiti caused a dramatic reduction in crime; a specific "hip" group of teenagers wore Hush Puppies and suddenly sparked a national craze.
- This is a book that should be read by everyone in business, politics, marketing, advertising, and anyone interested in trends, fashion, fads, policy making, and human behavior. In other words, all of us.
From the Publisher:
Why did crime in New York drop so suddenly in the mid-90s? How does an unknown novelist end up a bestselling author? Why is teenage smoking out of control, when everyone knows smoking kills? What makes TV shows like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? Why did Paul Revere succeed with his famous warning?
In this brilliant and groundbreaking book, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Ideas, behavior, messages, and products, he argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the Tipping Point.
In The Tipping Point, Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children's television, direct mail and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech company, and one of the world's greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics.
The Tipping Point is an intellectual adventure story written with an infectious enthusiasm for the power and joy of new ideas. Most of all, it is a road map to change, with a profoundly hopeful message--that one imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world.
From the Publisher:
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This bestselling book, in which Malcolm Gladwell brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
About the Author:
Malcolm Gladwell is a former business and science writer at the Washington Post. He is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker.
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