The Tipping Point
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
In 1994, Wolverine considered discontinuing its Hush Puppies lines of shoe — understandable since the company only sold 30,000 pairs that year. In 1996, the company sold more than 1.5 million pairs and earned fashion accessory of the year honors. The most fascinating part of the story is that Wolverine had done nothing to promote the shoe — it’s success was literally a market epidemic.
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell offers a fascinating look at social epidemics, their root causes, and how the smallest action can actually have enormous consequences. In doing so, he shows how to start “positive” epidemics of their own that require little input to start and can spread very, very quickly. Gladwell’s theories parallel the line of thinking that have made word-of-mouth and viral marketing so popular.
Gladwell borrowed the term “tipping point” from epidemiology. Epidemiologists use it to describe the moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass — the boiling point on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards.
Gladwell examines some obvious epidemics, such as the growth of AIDS and teen smoking. He also shows an interesting side of why crime in New York City plummeted in the mid-1990s and as well as the Hush Puppies story.
The Tipping Point is thoroughly researched and well written.
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