Book Review: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The book is authored by Malcolm Gladwell. He has compiled a series of some behavioural phenomenon of attitudinal change which went viral in their strange way. He has attempted to capture the common denominators across all these different so-called epidemic behaviours.

The book is written in a captivating manner, taking a reader from case to case, highlighting different personality styles and marketing nuances. It is well supported by psychological research which went into particular experiments. The author has captured a variety of subjects ranging from increased sales of Hush Puppies shoes, making of Sesame Street and Blue clues and Suicide-related problems of Micronesia. Overall the book is a balanced mix of curious cases, psychological theories, detailed personality analysis, and practical strategies.

The recurring theme of the book is to identify the tipping point in any episode of virality. The tipping point is a threshold beyond which the phenomenon spread like an epidemic. It is a moment of critical mass, the threshold, and the boiling point. He argues that little changes lead to big effects. In other words, three axises of the Tipping point are 'law of few', 'the stickiness', and 'the power of context'.

This book holds a great relevance in the Indian context. The book is US market centric. However, it teaches some important lessons of marketing and salesmanship. A similar book could be written in the Indian context highlighting Indian success stories and failures in social change. For example, how the phenomenon of the Tipping point could be used for changing the sanitation behavior of the masses or how this could be applied to change the crime rate or promote inter-caste marriage system in India?

This book gives enough food for thought and enough of food for distribution that would leave one satiated for few weeks in the office gossip hours. A must read for Marketing and Salesman guys. A good read for those who wants to bring some change in their surrounding. A decent read for those who wish to enhance their knowledge base and are looking for some fun.