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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting read, but be wary of the evidence
For the most part a great read. However, Mr Gladwell's use of evidence is very selective and the ambiguity of some of the conclusions from some of the studies is just ignored to fit Gladwell's argument. The studies used have been talked about in other books such as Freakanomics, and the way that they are used here to try and prove the concept of the book should be viewed...
Published 21 months ago by A. Buteux
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36 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
The Tipping Point
'The Tipping Point' is another entertaining, yet laboured book from Malcolm Gladwell. Like 'Blink' you get an interesting premise, explained very well at the beginning of the book, followed by 150 pages going over the same ground in greater depth. Once you've grasped the initial concept and had it proven with a few examples, you don't really need to go over it much...
Published 19 months ago by Spider Monkey
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting read, but be wary of the evidence, 11 Feb 2008
For the most part a great read. However, Mr Gladwell's use of evidence is very selective and the ambiguity of some of the conclusions from some of the studies is just ignored to fit Gladwell's argument. The studies used have been talked about in other books such as Freakanomics, and the way that they are used here to try and prove the concept of the book should be viewed with caution. The central idea of the book is very simple and reasonably logical, so the poor use of evidence does not distract too much.
Ultimately an interesting, enjoyable read, just a shame that it wasn't better researched.
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40 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
Does not disappoint., 8 Oct 2008
The book is about the "tipping point", that is, that moment when an idea or social behaviour has reached a level where it "tips" and spreads like crazy.
The book makes sense about how these things happen by using three rules- The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. Taking three rules, then, the book uses them to explain seemingly puzzling epidemic situations in society such as teen smoking or bestsellers.
Fun and interesting, if this kind of topic appeals to you, you'll like the book- its well written and an easy read. Other books that might appeal to general interest readers include The Sixty-Second Motivator.
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36 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
The Tipping Point, 1 May 2008
'The Tipping Point' is another entertaining, yet laboured book from Malcolm Gladwell. Like 'Blink' you get an interesting premise, explained very well at the beginning of the book, followed by 150 pages going over the same ground in greater depth. Once you've grasped the initial concept and had it proven with a few examples, you don't really need to go over it much more. Saying that, this book is an entertaining read and has some wonderful examples to illustrate the various points. I particularly enjoyed the chapter exploring the benefits, and tipping point of, sesame street and blues clues. Other chapters though, like the one on suicide and smoking, are pretty aimless and take a long time to make a very minor, insignificant point. This book is worth a read if you liked 'Blink' and it has some interesting ideas explored in it. If you like this I'd recommend 'Predictably irrational' which has similar experiments and is more coherent and focused. In fact, I'd probably recommend that book before this one. This is a good read, but not a great read.
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27 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
Buy it if..., 12 Jun 2007
Too many reviews have already been written about this book so I'll keep it brief and be careful not to go over old ground. Instead I'll just try to help you work out whether or not you should buy it: 1) Buy it if you've ever had an inkling that the stuff you've read in sociology or marketing textbooks may well have been a load of cobblers. 2) Buy it if you've ever had an inkling that the stuff you've read in politics or history textbooks may well be a load of cobblers. 3) Basically, buy it if you're an inquisitive kind of person who isn't satisfied with our culture's tendency towards over simplistic narratives. This book will be a breath of fresh air to you. PS - It would get 5 stars but it starts repeating itself about 2/3s of the way through.
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48 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
The book that tipped, 5 Feb 2006
In the Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell provides an overview on the phenomenon of social epidemics, the underlying reasons that make things tip. The book is well researched with academic contributions entangled with interesting narrative that illustrates the theory. I would have rated the book five stars if not for two issues. Firstly, the book is almost totally lacks critique about the theories and examples presented. Secondly, while the book contains a lot of interesting ideas, the effort to synthesize them is half-hearted. Mr. Gladwell has a made a great effort in going through a vast literature – mainly academic, but also popular – to find a number of key factors behind the social epidemics and some interesting narrative to illustrate them. However, the book is not at all academic, rather the value of Mr. Gladwell’s writing comes from packaging academic research to simple concepts and explaining these in length through examples. For those interested in details, there are some ten pages of endnotes that explain the concepts more thoroughly and provide references to the original literature. So what makes things tip? According to Mr. Gladwell this can be divided into three explaining categories: (1) the law of the few, (2) the stickiness factor, and (3) the power of context. The law of the few states that only a very small part of people are behind the word-of-mouth epidemics and they can be categorized into connectors, mavens, and salesmen. Connectors are persons with exceptionally large personal networks, mavens are experts on the “right” market price and on spotting bargains, and salesmen are persons with extraordinary skill to persuade. Stickiness factor refers to small “sticky” details that can greatly boost for instance the effect of advertising campaigns. Finally, the power of context states that people are powerfully affected by the surrounding circumstances in making their decisions. The Tipping Point provides a way of interpreting what factors have contributed to a certain epidemic or trend. I would have appreciated an effort to synthesize the theory and preferably in a more normative manner, e.g. by providing a framework on how, say, advertising campaigns can be made more effective from the epidemics point of view. Now the focus is on providing somewhat miscellaneous ideas that often are unintuitive, but which have at least some evidence to support them. There would have been a more objective flavor to the book if Mr. Gladwell would have also discussed the limitations of the theory and other explaining factors. For instance, a product might be popular simply because it is superb without particular need of endorsement from connectors, mavens and salesmen; crime in New York might have dropped due to other factors than “power of context” in form of e.g. removing graffiti from the underground (such as the legalization of abortion as suggested in the Freakonomics book). Nevertheless, the Tipping Point is a thought-provoking and interesting book worth reading.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Bigger is not always better, 11 Sep 2005
A curate's egg. The Tipping Point has a few really intriguing examples and the germ of great idea about behavioural viruses. How do ideas spread? What sparks them? Why do some take off and others go nowhere? These are questions that affect us all whether at a social and community level or in business. And Gladwell does us the great service of throwing a few ideas into the ring. I just wish he hadn't written it up as a book.Maclolm Galdwell is a wonderful essayist. His writing in the New Yorker is must-read stuff and perhaps this is his natural habitat. The Tipping Point seems like an over-long essay. A great idea stretched to fit the new form and as a result it becomes patchy. Good in parts, not so good in others. Worth a read? Sure. But sometimes less is so much more.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
A Big Idea book, 31 Jul 2003
The Tipping Point is one of those precious books that changes the way you think about the world around you. Gladwell makes a big idea (the science of fads and epidemics) fascinating and accessible, drawing from a convincing array of examples - from Hush puppies to AIDS, crime to yawning.I came late to this book (July 2003) and read it having already consumed Unleashing the Ideavirus, which was released later than The Tipping Point and covers some similar ideas. (Not surprising then that Gladwell wrote the Forward to Ideavirus). How ever despite a slight sense of (reverse) deja vue this is compelling stuff... particularly for those of us in business. As with similar books, the ideas may have been around for a while but the skill is making them accessible, and in the process Malcolm Gladwell has created a Tipping Point of his own.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
More anecdote than science, 20 Sep 2002
In 1992, reports Gladwell, there were 2,154 citizens of New York murdered by....other citizens of New York - crime had reached a peak and within a few short years after had reduced dramatically. What was the Tipping Point ?The book looks at this, and other, 'epidemics' and turning points to propose a set of generic factors that makes a situation 'tip'. The anecdotes are great, although some of the explanations to justify the generic factors are a bit laboured - you get the message pretty quickly. Not an approach that would stand up to much academic rigour, but arms you with some simple steps and enthusiasm to try and create your own epidemic - go on, try it.
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18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
Fascinating book with an optimistic message, 3 Jul 2002
I found this book very interesting to read. It very practically shows how big changes in societies often happen unexpectedly and suddenly and can be caused by small events. The explanation is: if circumstances are right, ideas, behavior and products can, with the help of the right kinds of people, spread throughout a society like an epidemic. When that happens, a critical point, the tipping point, can be reached at which the behavior and features of the system itself suddenly change. This principle is clearly illustrated by stories about the sudden decrease in crime in New York in the nineties, by the sudden popularity of Hush Puppies and by several other interesting stories. This book contains many interesting ideas and facts, some of them very counter-intuitive. The author manages to make accessible some implications of chaos theory in a very easy and entertaining way for a large public. What I also like about this book is the optimistic tone and message: change is possible and it can happen non-linearly, which means that small events can lead to major changes. Fascinating book.
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29 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
Pleasant, but not very useful, 18 Jan 2006
Gladwell clearly makes the case that big events can follow from tiny initial changes, that society has Tipping Points. He illustrates with a number of interesting examples.But this is not actually anything new. Back in about the '70s, people got very excisted about so-called Catastrophe Theory, which modelled Tipping Points mathematically, and for a short while ther was a lot of hype about a scientific way of analysing disasters. But that fizzled out for the same reason this will. While it shows that systems have Tipping Points, it provides no way of predicting them or recognising them when they turn up. Only when it has passed and the change has occurred can you say "That was a Tipping Point, that was". Only when the knowledge is of no more use wil you know that a Tip has occurred. So apart from realising thet "just one more push" may have a disproportionate effect and reach a goal that hundreds of similar pushes have failed to do, you learn nothing from this book. But it is a pleasant read.
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