WHAT DOES CREATE TRENDS?:About the book by Malcom Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make Big Difference "

Malcom Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make Big Difference "


Sometimes small things can make big differences. All you have to do is find the hidden buttons to these small things, which actually have the power to act big. Let’s look at the case of epidemics, let’s find the hidden mechanisms that originate and sustain the trends and social epidemics.

By Olena Denysyuk

 I have often been asking myself, why do we love to follow trends, that, at first glance, we might not like? But which, we might like it later?

 

In this regard, I chose to read the book  by Malcom Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make Big Difference ", a book  about what makes ideas infectious, what messages can spread the ideas, and how to start and sustain social epidemics and trends. It didn’t answer exactly my question.  

 

 

And when I read the book, I was thinking of giving it only 2 stars on Goodreads. But by reaching the end, anyway, it earned one extra star.   

With all respect to journalism, I was initially a little disappointed that a book about trends/epidemics (sociology, in broader terms) was written by a journalist. I might have been spoiled by the most intelligent book by Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", as it was written by an expert. He managed to deliver his study of psychology and sociology not only reliably, but also amusingly. 

 

It's not that there is something wrong with Gladwell’s ideas and hypothesis, but I presume I am a bit critical towards his choice of arguments and research material-some of it seems weak to me, and he even sharpened some of it to fit into his own ideas. So I wonder why the book was so recommended by so many clever people.

 

 It's not that ORIGINAL, NEITHEIR ACADEMICALLY nor SCIENTIFICALLY. Here, the book had lost one star.

 

But soon after, I realized, it is rather good entertaining book - within the fields of marketing, but not human behavior or economics, as I originally thought it would be. And the book is even a bit thought-provoking and brain-teasing, I admit. The lost star found its way back!  

Here I would like tell you why the book is an eye opener for the marketing and sales people, and not for people, who wants to study the behavior of epidemics and trends.   

 

The Mechanics of social epidemics

 

In February 2013 a new social video epidemic had started, an intense, but short: Harlem Shake. So what made it so trendy apart from other 1 billion DREGNERØV YouTube experiments? And what did it take for some people to be part of it? (The example is not from the book). 

 

I guess the book answers these questions partly. Let’s look at the Tipping point(s) of epidemics.

 

So, there are three rules of the Tipping Point:

 

• The Law of the Few
•  
• The Stickiness Factor
•  
• The Power of Context

 

The Law of the Few sustained by Connectors, "people with a special gift for bringing the world together". The criterion is that they know lots of people. "They are people whom all of us can reach on only a few steps because, for one reason or another, they manage to occupy many different worlds and subcultures and niches". They have a gift of combining personality, curiosity, self-confidence, sociability and energy to send the relevant information in a thousand directions at once. They are MAVENS. They accumulate knowledge and information and know what to do with it.

 

The Stickiness Factor sustained by the fact that memorable information "can create change, that it can spur someone to action". So, for your idea to cause a tip, you would need to adjust your information to become practical, personal and to keep someone attention.

 

The Power of Context sustained by small adjustments that, however, would be so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predisposition. The key word her is situation:

 

“When we think only in terms of inherent traits and forget the role of situations, we are deceiving ourselves about the REAL causes of human behavior.”

 

“When it comes to interpreting other People's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of the situation and context.”

 

 

The Power of Context says that there must be something little extra to add to the tipping point (in crimes, it's the "Brocken Window" effect-signals, which invite crimes in the first place, for example, graffiti. Indisputably, the psychiatric disorder of a person, will likely contribute to his crime commitment. But the "extra little special", like everyday signs of social disorder - like graffiti - is more likely to start the epidemics of crime. It’s like an invitation.

 

So the situation content, or a content that can overwhelm our inherent predisposition are important content for an epidemic to happen.

 

These three rules, according to the author, "provide us with direction of how we go about reaching a Tipping Point.”

 

The REAL VALUE of understanding these three rules

 

But I think the real value of his home-made model comes NOT from his revelation of how the epidemics are being originated, but rather from his ideas on how we can use this knowledge to fight the epidemics (crime, teenage smoking, and suicides). It provides you with the concentrated areas that you can work with. For example, the antismoking campaign sent to teenagers, telling that smoking destroys your organs, will, very likely, have no effect. By The Low of the Few, smoking is cool, because cool people, people who like to socialize and party, do smoke. If you are to be cool, you ought to smoke. So, probably, the campaign telling the smoking is not cool at all (being told by cool people), might have bigger impact on teenagers, rather than telling that smoking kills. Also, what does make you addict to smoking, apart from coolness? Nicotine is one the Stickiness Factors her. Our brains get addiction to nicotine differently- we have different tolerance to the concentration of nicotine. But the lower the concentration of nicotine in one cigarette, the lower chances that you will become an addict. Teenagers, whether you like it or not, will try smoking. So making  cigarettes will a lower level of nicotine will be more beneficial for a campaign, rather than telling that smoking kills - they will get their portion of coolness, but at the lower risk of getting addicted to it. I am sorry, for this very provoking and maybe inappropriate example - it just for the sake of argument. But if you apply the same logic, it gives you more space for critical thinking and more focused areas to work with, especially if you are to influence people’s behavior.

 

So what about the Harlem Shake?

 

“Epidemics, fashion, trends, etc, are, at their root, about the process of transformation”, according to Gladwell. When we sell ideas or products, we are trying to transform our audience, in some small, but critical respect: we are trying to infect them. We do it by the influence of special people, not necessarily powerful people, but, people of extraordinary personal connections. That's the Law of the Few. Had the "Harlem shake epidemic" started by boring people- even with the same context - the epidemic would had been dead without even getting started.

 

Then this information is sticking to us because it’s simple and memorable .When the message is so memorable (I still hear the Harlem Shake in my head), it ought to have a Stickiness Factor.

 

But we need to remember, that small changes in context - The Power of Context - can be just as important in tipping epidemics, even thought that fact appears to violate some of our most deeply held assumptions about human nature. (I guess the Fireman doing the Harlem Shake has absolutely added to its tipping point- it did add a new surprising dimension to fireman profession).

 

My verdict is:

 

The author expressed his ideas into a new context. However, to me it seemed more like "expressing the beliefs”. Some of the claims were interesting, some were boring, like reading the Cosmopolitan at my age. I think, the biggest weakness of the book, at that these ideas/claims were presented as general truth - as it is how the world is. I would have expected stronger argumentation if we are to believe so.

 

However, the book is not about econometrics, as said, it is a good marketing book. He did teach me how these three rules are being applied to other puzzling situations and epidemics from the world around us. So, this is a very good marketing, and even problem-solving book. And there plenty of ideas, if you wish your book to be a bestseller, or your product to experience the joy of an epidemic (so to say, you might learn how to find a person or some means to translate the message of Innovators into something the rest of us can understand) to reach its tipping point. When you will understand what drives an epidemic to get to its tipping point, it will give you more focused areas to work with, whether you are marketing, or sales person; or strategist, or even analyst or a policy – maker, or even a blogger. As you know, little things make big differences.