After reading The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell, I learned a lot of interesting things about how epidemics and trends spark. The book explains in great detail that the reason something as innocuous as why every girl is wearing lace front shirts this season, or why all of a sudden Adidas is the trendiest brand around these days, is all due to certain people. People who are connecters, mavens or salesmen. The connectors have the social clout to spread ideas through word-of-mouth, and often they are people who are trusted and admired. Mavens have all of the intel and knowledge to give people informed advice, and according to Gladwell they enjoy sharing their advice with people because they genuinely want to be helpful. The salesmen are good with the power of persuasion. This made me think about the mavens, connecters, and salesmen in my life. Who do I trust and look to for advice? Who introduced me to my circle of friends? Am I the connector? I’m still unsure about all of these questions but it opened up a discussion for me that will surely have me paying more attention to the trends and patterns in my everyday life that usually go unnoticed.
Gladwell also discusses what makes a trend take? The answer is something he calls the stickiness factor. Trends, epidemics, and the like only take if they have this stickiness factor. Even though the concept isn’t difficult to understand, it can be hard to put into practice. The book had me thinking about myself and my future career. How do I make myself, for lack of a better term, a trend that sticks? How can I use what I learned from reading The Tipping Point? How can this information help my work? These are things I’m sure I will have plenty of time to ponder while I am searching for a job next year.
Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who wants more insight into what makes a trend take off, or really anyone who wants an interesting read. If anything I found the book interesting because it focuses on different studies and experiments that make humans behave the way that they do. It opened me up to the idea that there are people out there with certain special “powers” that they seem to be born with, or learned very naturally. I’ll be sure to keep my eye on the look out for these people in the future.
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