The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Book Review: A fascinating read with a plethora of examples
Summary: 5 Stars
From syphilis in Boston to Sesame Street on the television, this book is riddled with great fascinating examples of how small ripples can lead to tidal wave phenomena. While a little too much detail for my liking was given to the Big Bird goings-on, it takes varied epidemic periods of recent history and puts them in a framework that finally links them all together. Who'd have thought that the crime reduction in New York City has the same basic cause and effect profile as Hush Puppy sales?A great book....should be read and re-read.
Book Review: Thought provoking but overly long
Summary: 4 Stars
It is said that to make money from writing you have to basically serve up the same story in a number of books. The Tipping Point would probably make a very good magazine article but in book form the same information is reserved time and again until it is thoroughly stale. That said, it is done with style, the book is very well written and thought provoking. There just are not enough ideas to fill a 250 page book.Book Review: Bigger is not always better
Summary: 3 Stars
A curate's egg. The Tipping Point has a few really intriguing examples and the germ of great idea about behavioural viruses. How do ideas spread? What sparks them? Why do some take off and others go nowhere? These are questions that affect us all whether at a social and community level or in business. And Gladwell does us the great service of throwing a few ideas into the ring. I just wish he hadn't written it up as a book.Maclolm Galdwell is a wonderful essayist. His writing in the New Yorker is must-read stuff and perhaps this is his natural habitat. The Tipping Point seems like an over-long essay. A great idea stretched to fit the new form and as a result it becomes patchy. Good in parts, not so good in others.
Worth a read? Sure. But sometimes less is so much more.
Book Review: career & corp. booster: no time to read:3Hr. Audio CD.
Summary: 5 Stars
For this book review I will take the liberty to focus exclusively on the very 'busy' amongst the potential readers. These potential readers, or management book collectors as I should maybe call them, rarely manage to read more that 20% of books content. Their concentration is far from optimal as they often do their reading in places like; waiting room, launches, airplanes etc.Research done on frequently traveling executives has shown us that their average population retention rate triples, and that their subject completion rate almost quadruples, if they get the same content access (the same book/literature). In an audio CD format. It is also interesting to point out that these same individuals are twice as likely to endorse and lend the audio CD to someone they feel closely related too.
Six month's ago I bought multiple examples of the paperback which I handed out as Christmas gifts to corporate clients. A few of the latter have actually read the book and gained incredibly insight and knowledge from it. Most of my clients, however never found the time to read it.
This Christmas my clients will receive the same book, but in its audio format. I am convinced that they will benefit greatly from the books content which this time they will absorb because of its audio format. I simultaneously hope that some, even if only a few, will rediscover the value of reading such valuable works.
Drs. Govert Doedijns MSc.,Senior Executive Coach, M.D. paris-institute.com, and Faculty member in the Behavior and Social Sciences, The Netherlands.
Book Review: What is it? What was it? Where did it go?
Summary: 4 Stars
This book generated a great deal of attention when it first appeared because Gladwell approaches creative thinking from a unique perspective: he focuses on a critically important moment (a "window of opportunity") when a decision must be made and explains how (a) to prepare for that moment and then (b) make a decision which is both creative and appropriate. He describes his book as "the biography of an idea", a simple idea: the best way to understand the emergence of all major social, economic, or political forces (what Kuhn and then Barker call a "paradigm shift") "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." (This is precisely what Seth Godin means when discussing his concept of an "ideavirus.") But first they must be activated, set in motion, more often than not by what Gladwell characterizes as a "little thing." In the Conclusion of his book, he suggests: "Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push -- in just the right place -- it can be tipped." He offers an abundance of examples. As I first read the book, and began to grasp this concept, I thought of Isaac Newton and his alleged encounter with a falling apple. Also of Shakespeare's Richard III who lost a kingdom because his horse lost a shoe. You get the idea. Tipping points can occur almost anywhere at any time. Most of us fail to recognize them because of what I call "the invisibility of the obvious." They can be the result of many different factors which, in combination, can sometimes change the course of history. During the next few years, my guess is that progressively more tipping points will occur and at progressively greater velocity but that they will reveal themselves not as windows of opportunity but as blinks of a strobe light. Those who see them and know what to do about them will probably have a decisive competitive advantage, if not dominate the marketplace in which they compete. At least for a while....One final point. As is also true in Blink which he wrote later, Gladwell often seems to be a "hit and run" thinker. One can only imagine how much more valuable the two books would be had Gladwell expolored his insights in greater depth and developed them with greater rigor.