The Tipping Point : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

"The Tipping Point" is the biography of an idea, and the idea is quite simple: that many of the problems we face - from murder to teenage delinquency to traffic jams - behave like epidemics. They aren't linear phenomena in the sense that they steadily and predictably change according to the level of effort brought to bear against them. They are capable of sudden and dramatic changes in direction. Years of well-intentioned intervention may have no impact at all, yet the right intervention - at just the right time - can start a cascade of change.

Many of the social ills that face us today, in other words, are as inherently volatile as the epidemics that periodically sweep through the human population: little things can cause them to "tip" at any time and if we want to understand how to confront and solve them we have to understand what those "tipping points" are. In this study, Malcolm Gladwell explores the ramifications of this. Not simply for politicians and policy-makers, his method provides a way of viewing everyday experience and seeking to enable us to develop strategies for everything from raising a child to running a company.

"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."

Defining that precise moment when a trend becomes a trend, Malcolm Gladwell probes the surface of everyday occurrences to reveal some surprising dynamics behind explosive social changes. He examines the power of word-of-mouth and explores how very small changes can directly affect popularity. Perceptive and imaginative, The Tipping Point is a groundbreaking book destined to overturn conventional thinking in business, sociological, and policy-making arenas.

An intellectual adventure story and a road map to change, with a profoundly hopeful message - that one imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world.

"Malcolm Gladwell proposes a fascinating and possibly useful theory in "The Tipping Point"…what makes his book so appealing is the way he approaches his subject…he follows his precept of his subtitle and explores the little things that make a big difference…" (New York Times)