The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

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Average customer rating 4.4 (11 comments)

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Malcolm Gladwell writes an inspired book from start to finish. He categorizes and dives into detail on how an idea in our culture "sticks" and spreads, motivating the reader to be introspective and determine their value and strengths in "being the change" in our society. This can help as an overall positive boost in our day to day life as well as those who are venturing into entrepreneurship. I highly recommend this book to those with an open mind and seeking to enrich their perspective of what works and doesn't work in their lives as well as finding their personal tipping points.

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I just could not get into this book. I found it to be a dry and difficult read, jumping all over the place and lingering on points that needed only a few sentences or paragraphs. Other people might enjoy this book, but it was not for me.

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This again is a great book by Gladwell, though I personally like Outliers the best because it is the most personal. This is more of broad strokes of social behavior. But still it is a wonderfully insightful read on what causes a tipping point to occur. In all, I think it presents great ideas, though I believe it is subject to quite a bit of reasoning and one can argue one way or another whether these hypothesis are true or not. A great thing with Gladwell is he forms his arguments in a very comprehensible way, keeping one engaged. So even though you may not necessarily agree with what is said, you would at least stick around to find out what he's on about.

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The Tipping Point is a permanent fixture in my personal library. Not only is this book one of the best trade hardbacks I’ve ever read, but it’s also a book that I continue to look to it in order to make meaningful changes in my professional life. As an author and independent publisher who aspires to turn my “little book” educational series into a global brand, I recently reread the Tipping Point in the hopes of gleaning from it clues on how I could create a tipping point in my own publishing business. First, I sought to better understand the people around me: who exactly are those mavens, salespersons, and connectors? Second, I started tinkering with the way information was worded on promotional materials. The goal was to make the message more “sticky.” I started by focusing on one of my education books titled The Little Blue Reasoning Book: 50 Powerful Principles for Clear and Effective Thinking. This book is one in a four-part series and sister to The Little Red Writing Book, The Little Gold Grammar Book, and The Little Green Math Book. Upon publication, I noticed that initial sales of The Little Blue Reasoning Book were lagging behind the sales of my other three books. I found this somewhat surprising as I had expected the “blue book” to vie with The Little Red Writing Book for first place in the series. Although I recognize that reasoning skills do not address as clear a niche market as do writing, grammar, and math skills, I also believe that a book on reasoning skills represents a more unique educational offering. Reasoning skills are, after all, one of the most important yet seldom taught skills. My original flap copy on the backside of the book contained standard descriptive sentences such as: “Reasoning skills help us make sense of the world, including how to make decisions, tackle opportunities, evaluate claims, and solve problems.” For promotional purposes, I tinkered with the stickiness and came up with: “This book is based on a simple but powerful observation: Individuals who develop outstanding reasoning and thinking skills do so primarily by mastering a limited number of the most important reasoning principles and concepts, which they use over and over again. What are these recurring principles and concepts? The answer to this question is the basis of this book.” The Tipping Point is based on three rules: the law of the few (mavens, salespersons, and connectors), content (stickiness), and context (environment and circumstances). As I started to think of ways to marry the concepts of stickiness and context, I came up with the following verbiage: “Never has there been a time when one idea can make a bigger difference. In the case of thinking and reasoning skills, one idea or concept — creative or analytical — can greatly influence the outcome of a personal or business decision. The more we fulfill our own potentials, the better we can contribute to our communities.” The principles advocated by the Tipping Point continue to be an integral part of my book marketing efforts. The bet is that little, incremental things do make a big difference. Brandon Royal, award-winning educational author, www.brandonroyal.com

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Gladwell's storytelling gift combined with both the variety of social topics and the applicability of his findings make The Tipping Point a strong best-of-the-decade category. Also inspired one of the key buzzwords of the decade.

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I found a lot of truth in this small book - I gave a copy to the co-owner of the advertising agency I was working for at the time. It also led me to seek out the rest of Malcolm Gladwell's writing, so it's been a continuing education for me. He's a John McPhee for the 21st century.

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Still relevant, impactful and great after all this time.

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The book has many fascinating premises--and tries (sometimes very successfully) to explain them. For example, how does some fashion suddenly become so trendy that everyone is wearing it? How does a restaurant suddenly become the place to eat? Most of the answers boil down to people--and how some folks just hook up two intersted parties altruistically--and help the trends along.

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Ever wonder how something becomes "hip"? Do you look at other people's shoes and think, "Good grief. How did that become 'the thing'?" "The Tipping Point" explains how something as mundane and innocuous as Hush Puppies can become the hippest thing to own, how a regularly occuring phenomena like school violence can become A Social Problem, and how to make something hip. Read it to refute faulty theories at parties, or to come up with some theories of your own on how things become popular--or infamous.

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It's amazing how fast new ideas and trends can take off nowadays. Because of my grandpa having Alzheimer's (so painful for us, the family members that he doesn't recognize), I'll take the example of the craze for "mental fitness." We have a head, a brain and all we have been doing for years is workout our body without thinking about exercising our brain just as importantly. Then Alzheimer's comes, the baby-boomers phenomena and scientists discover that contrary to a false belief we CAN grow new cells IF we stimulate our brain regularly. Now, suddenly Nintendo sells millions of brain video games and brain gyms like Agogus.com (which I joined) become the great thing to do. I'm amazed and delighted by this continuous progress and I highly recommend this book.

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this book though made an interesting read, it still could not explain alot of things, case study was good their approach of coming to a conclusion very good yet the book is cold and makes out human beings to be like robots, there are so many things you cant tag to a living being. i have recommended the book to sev people from diff prof and bckgrnds, and one relative commented whatever the book has to say can be learnt much better practically. cheers to the author for making an attempt but the style of writing does not make me want to read the book again. on the other hand sorry for a comparison but books like the alchemist though dealing with a different topic, make a long lasting impact. the author seems to know the human mind much better based on the sixth sense and not some lab case studies. ps: not all humans can be scrutinised under a micrscope like a specimen.