In the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, it discusses the major changes in society and why they happen suddenly and in an unexpected manner. Gladwell allows us to see the patterns that ideas take and makes us see how they can spread like infectious diseases. He analyzes fashion trends, direct mail, children’s television, smoking, and the American Revolution in order to round up hints about how ideas become infectious, he calls these “social epidemics”. I chose this book because one of my favorite things to do is watch how new trends and ideas begin and furthermore develop. It’s fun to see how something so small as an idea can turn into something so great. Now more than ever before, technology is advancing more and more each day, causing a commotion in our society and an urge to have the latest and greatest ideas out there. This book has helped me add a few new things to my general business knowledge. One being that you have to be very exact and creative in order to convey your message in a way that will make your idea attract the correct public. Another thing is that you should never take for granted marketing via word of mouth, because that is one of the most powerful ways social epidemics occur. …show more content…
He is a graduate from the University of Toronto and while studying there, he took a twelve week training course at the National Journalism Center. He is a former business and science writer at the Washington Post and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. Gladwell has been named by Time Magazine one of the world’s 100 most influential people and is in high demand by the nation. He is widely appreciated for his work and his books sell by the millions. Malcolm Gladwell brings new ideas and points of view to the table, he is a very influential and convincing person, this allows him to expand and create new ways for a person to look at the world of
In the article Threshold of Violence published by The New Yorker Magazine, author Malcolm Gladwell alludes to the cause of school shootings and why they transpire. Gladwell tries to make sense of the epidemic by consulting a study of riots by stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter. Granovetter sought to understand “why people do things that go against who they are or what they think is right, for instance, why typically non-violent, law-abiding people join a riot”(Granovetter). He concluded that people’s likelihood of joining a riot is determined by the number of people already involved. The ones who start a riot don’t need anyone else to model this behavior for them that they have a “threshold” of zero. But others will riot only if someone
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell looks at a number of social epidemics and analyzes their build up to the point where they tip. “Tipping” is that point where an epidemic booms, or grows, to its maximum potential. Gladwell begins defining “tipping” with a literal example of the famous shoes, Hush Puppies. Once considered old-fashioned, Hush Puppies experienced a social boom in the mid-90s when hipsters in New York made them trendy again. Gladwell continues explaining “tipping” with a medical epidemic of syphilis in Baltimore. Gladwell introduces us to three essential rules of epidemics: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context. The Law of the Few says a key factor in epidemics is the role of the messenger: it spreads through word-of-mouth transmission. Gladwell explains this theory with an example of how Paul Revere managed to spread the news of British invasion overnight. Gladwell continues to explain that there are several types of people that create these types of epidemics. They are called Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. Connectors are those people that are very social and can literally connect with people with as little as two degrees of separation. Mavens are those that know a lot about a lot of different things. They may recommend a certain restaurant and you must go because you know what they told you about it is true. And Salesmen are exactly that: people that are easily social and persuading.
How exactly do social trends start and how do they become such huge phenomena? The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell explains how ideas, trends, and behaviors reach a “tipping point” (Gladwell, 2000). According to Gladwell, a tipping point is the peak of a particular phenomenon. The Tipping Point describes exactly how health epidemics, fashion trends, television shows, products, etc. become popular and last for elongated periods of time. In this summary, I will attempt to reiterate what Gladwell means in reference to “how little things make big differences.”
Gordon and Wightman go around looking for outcast teenage kids, in the streets of big cities to discover what is cool and upcoming. Gorgon says, “There were a lot of places could go to buy vinyl records. It was a strong place to go for looks. Then it went back to being horrible.” It just goes to show how style is always changing, and everyday new items are in demand. Gladwell uses one of the most famous diffusion studies from Bruce Ryan and Neal Gross's with their analysis of the spread of hybrid seed corn. The first to use this hybrid seed corn were “innovators”, next were “early adaptors” then came the “early majority” and “late majority”, finally there were the “laggards”. The “innovators” are the trendsetters in what is and is not cool, and everyone else are the followers. Once the laggards are doing what is deemed cool,
As described in novel The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference the course of any trend, movement, social behavior, and even the spread of a virus has a general trend line that in essence resemble a parabola with 3 main critical points. Any trend line first starts from zero, grows until it crosses the first tipping point, and then spreads like wildfire. Afterwards, the trend skyrockets to its carrying capacity (Galdwell, 2000). Then the trend gradually declines before it reaches the next tipping and suddenly falls out of favor and out of memory. Gladwell defines tipping points as the “magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire” (Gladwell, 2000).
According to Gladwell, “the tipping point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point". The book for the most part seeks to explain and describe the "mysterious" sociological changes that mark everyday life. As it is stated by Gladwell, "ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do". When we critically think about the idea of viruses and how fast they spread, we can understand how powerful Gladwell’s statement really is. All it takes is a single person in the room to spread something as huge as an epidemic, the same in our everyday life, a simple small idea can be the starting point of a big trend. This of course takes place today in our everyday life and is supported by Gladwell’s examples.
The book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell is about the moment when a product, behavior, or idea spreads throughout the world. In writing this, Malcolm Gladwell was trying to help people understand how something can go from not being popular to being the latest fad, how crime rates in New York suddenly dropped lower than ever in the 1990s, and why William Dawes wasn’t nearly as successful as Paul Revere. Teaching people how the tipping point is achieved was the primary message of The Tipping Point.
In his novel The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell explains how the little things in society can cause major epidemics. To show this, Gladwell uses examples of social epidemics that prove how changing little things in a situation can have a positive or negative effect. By using these examples, Gladwell is trying to figure out how people can make their own positive epidemics and make them stick.
Is it possible to know something without realizing how we know it? This is the question Malcolm Gladwell deliberates in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell uses the results from various scientific experiments to delve into the phenomenon of “thin-slicing.” Thin-slicing, is defined in psychology as making quick decisions on the basis of limited information. Gladwell stresses that these “thin slices,” are astonishingly accurate, and sometimes more accurate than decisions that are made after long hours of careful deliberation.
Everett Rogers defines diffusion as “a special type of communication in which the messages are concerned with a new idea. It is this newness of the idea in the message content of communication that gives diffusion its special character. The newness means that some degree of uncertainty is involved” (Rogers, 1982, p. 6). Moreover, it is the process of communicating an innovation through media over time among members of a social system.
Imagine a protest from the civil rights period and its many unique qualities, how does it differ from one you would see today on CNN? In Malcolm Gladwell’s piece, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, Gladwell argues that social media itself is not an adequate enough tool to organize protests of any kind. He believes that old hierarchy organizations like the NAACP are more effective in their missions than a facebook group or go fund me page. I can see where Gladwell is coming from in this argument, but his word choice and writing style really loses my attention as the work progresses and like one of the previous essays declares, I get distracted easily while reading this. Gladwell admits that there are some benefits to rebellion
Diffusion of innovation is explained as a method of market insertion of new products and services, which is driven by social impacts (Mahajan et al. 2010). Diffusion theory found on frame suggested by Rogers (1962) explains the presumption, that there are four parts of diffusion method: innovation with its attributes, communication channels, time and social system. Rogers characterises five portions of possible adopters of innovation, based on their penchant to adopt a particular innovation: innovators, early adopters, early majorities, late majorities and laggards.
The diffusion of innovation theory is a multifaceted tool that can be used for many purposes. It allows for a look at as to why an innovation succeeds or why it fails and it can also tell you how that innovation spread and to who it spread to over a certain period of time. The culmination of a life time of work by Everett M. Rogers who is the leader in the field of innovation diffusion and utilized by many that gathers most of the information needed through surveys. When applied to the field of the spread of media through the internet it can give a picture as to the types of things people find entertaining and it can also map how that media diffuses into society.
The new generations have the tendency to rely more on the new technology which make them more reliable to changes compared to the old ones. Technological convergence is in fact affecting our everyday lives or even our work lives. It is valuable for the marketing industry as all media is grouped in a single device. These types of new devices have become a new tool for trend search. These technology changes the behaviors of people easily. It has become a new medium of advertising to the right people in the right place. Advertisers have found an effective way to manipulate people to get their products. They can simply get a celebrity to tweet about their products where it will be seen by followers. It is an efficient way to reach people at low cost through social media. It is very simple for marketers to analyze the tendency of consumer’s behavior through social media. It facilitates the tasks of marketers and becomes more resourceful over years. With only a little click on advertising on a Facebook page allow the marketer to get information about a person. This will eventually be helpful when meeting customer’s needs, wants and demand. Technology convergence builds relationship between the company and the consumer. Even after 10 years the impact will just tend to increase, with new ways of connecting and ways to do
Technology has come a long ways from its existence till today. In today’s modern world, people are surrounded by technology everywhere. In the present, people are surrounded by disrupting technologies every day. Today innovators are always creating new technologies that will make an impact on the daily lives of millions. Technology has made the lives of many people easier. The influence of technology has made an impact on social media. Social media has impacted the society in many ways. Whether it is the life of an individual to how successful a company is going to be. Social media is not just about tweeting about what you just accomplished or instagraming what food you are about to eat at a very nice restaurant. The uses of social media is way broader. Now most social media companies are buying out and merging with many other companies that will be off use to them. The people of society has certainly come from a long way. Social media is influencing consumers in what they are going to buy next. Social media is helping businesses to become more aware of their impact they have on they customers. Social media has a big presence for an individual and a business. This research paper is going to be over how social media impacts an individual. Then it is going to be about how much of an impact it has on businesses. Afterwards it is going to go over the pros and the cons of social media in society. Then this research paper is going to conclude on where social media is heading towards in the near future and so on.