Before you Blink
Tip!
That's right, tip.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book The Tipping Point just before he wrote *blink. (Pretty good cover design and typesetting, I might add.)
The premise of the book is the tipping point, or the point in time at which something reaches critical mass, and has the ability to affect drastic social change. This book is very well written, and is based on an accumulation of examples to illustrate this simple concept. Gladwell goes on to explain that the tipping point is something that cannot be quantified, because, like a trend, it catches like wildfire. He uses the New York crime reate in the late eighties and early nineties as an example, saying that there was a point in time were crime ran rampant, even in New York's subways. To stop the crime, the new transit police chief, William Bratton, simply cracked down on fare beating, arresting dozens of fare beaters with concealed weapons and, incidentally, criminal records. After a short period of this strict adherance to the details, subway crime of all kinds dropped off sharply, simply because it was stopped at the gates. Even though this fare beater clean-up took four years to complete for the entire subway system, when the tipping point was reached, the crime rate plummeted. Gladwell also brings up such terms as the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context and uses them to explain how ideas catch on, and are able to change society drastically.
This book is straightforward, an easy read and Gladwell's insights and explanations make the book worth it's price.
That's right, tip.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book The Tipping Point just before he wrote *blink. (Pretty good cover design and typesetting, I might add.)
The premise of the book is the tipping point, or the point in time at which something reaches critical mass, and has the ability to affect drastic social change. This book is very well written, and is based on an accumulation of examples to illustrate this simple concept. Gladwell goes on to explain that the tipping point is something that cannot be quantified, because, like a trend, it catches like wildfire. He uses the New York crime reate in the late eighties and early nineties as an example, saying that there was a point in time were crime ran rampant, even in New York's subways. To stop the crime, the new transit police chief, William Bratton, simply cracked down on fare beating, arresting dozens of fare beaters with concealed weapons and, incidentally, criminal records. After a short period of this strict adherance to the details, subway crime of all kinds dropped off sharply, simply because it was stopped at the gates. Even though this fare beater clean-up took four years to complete for the entire subway system, when the tipping point was reached, the crime rate plummeted. Gladwell also brings up such terms as the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context and uses them to explain how ideas catch on, and are able to change society drastically.This book is straightforward, an easy read and Gladwell's insights and explanations make the book worth it's price.
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