Book Review: Tipping Point

Small things do make a big difference!  That is the point of the Tipping Point by Gladwell.  This book provides some great insights on how having just the right person, the right words or right environment can have a huge impact on making something big happen.  I guess this book has been around a while but if you haven’t read it, I recommend it.

The book  provides a clear and understandable analysis of epidemics, fads, or big changes in society and business and describes how:

• the few – the people who are connectors, mavens and salespeople,
• the stickiness of the message, and
• the environment

were the cause of big change. The examples explored include:

• The re-emergence of Hush Puppies
• The syphilis epidemic
• The reduction of crime in New York City
• Airwalk boom and bust

I think this book presents interesting ideas about how people solve some very hard problems with innovative and surprisingly simple solutions.

I really liked this book because:

• It was easy to read and made sense
• It helped me to understand some things that I don’t think I had thought about before
• It had good ideas supported by interesting examples
• It is applicable to lots of thing I work on
• It makes me think I could make change happen by using these ideas

In applying technology to solve problems we often introduce change.  Change is hard.  It is often resisted.  I think we could use some of the ideas in this book to implement change more successfully.  It shouldn’t be to hard to find the connectors, mavens and sales people in our organizations that would help us implement change.  We could work to present our ideas in a way that makes them stick.  We  can find small changes in the environment (sometimes in our systems) that facilitate change.  The main point is that we should recognize that we are asking the organization to change and we should spend some time thinking about how to make that change in an effective way.  The ideas in this book will help.

Are you interested in making changes in your market, organization or the world? The ideas in this book should be valuable to you.  I really enjoyed reading the book, discussing it with my family and friends, and seeing how it could apply in several things I am working on.

Have you read it?  How does it apply to what you are doing?

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
2. Book Review: Made to Stick
3. Review: Ken Watanabe’s Problem Solving 101
4. Will I ever Browse a Book Store again?
5. So What?