ISBN: 0316346624

Okay, this is more like a mini-review. I'm not going to pad this up with chapter lists and summaries, or point-by-point examples.

I finally got around to reading The Tipping Point, a book authored by Malcolm Gladwell. While this is a very popular work in the software/management/entrepreneur realms, and has been out for several years, I always seemed to have something more important at the top of the pile (Biztalk Server 2004 Unleashed was a real page-turner!).

This 304-page book kicks off with an example of a balanced system that became unbalanced: Syphilis in Baltimore in the 1990s. This communicable disease was a relatively low-level problem, with a fairly constant number of cases per year, until suddenly it became an epidemic: Over a short period of time the number of new cases increased dramatically. Several theories are presented to explain this - for instance that budget cuts in public treatment and education upset what was previously a precariously balanced system. Syphilis had "tipped".

Much of the rest of the book provides theories on why some ideas or memes tip (often presented in an almost instructional manner - e.g. learn from this to know how to make your ideas tip, which explains why the book is so popular), often juxtaposing it with the syphilis epidemic. Intermixed with this are some basic, overly generic social profiles of the types of people who are instrumental in making ideas tip. These profile types are often supported by the contrast of the ride of Paul Revere to that of William Dawes, where the former was purportedly a connected, influential individual presenting information in the right context, and the latter was not so much.

Ultimately I wasn't entirely satisfied with the book. I often felt that it was taking divergent ideas and trying to shoehorn them into the tipping metaphor. I also got a feeling that some facts were simplified, or perhaps presented out of context, to make them fit his case. The book also gave me the feeling that it needed a few more revisions until it achieved a more uniform, smooth presentation: Instead of a constant expansion and refinement of the central theme, this felt more like a series of papers on a common topic, with some token shout-outs to the common theme to try to pull it together.

Is it a worthwhile read? Absolutely. It's an interesting, entertaining read, and provides a lot of superficial sociology water-cooler expertise. However if one were looking for a better, more supported and consistent read on the fascinating topic of human psychology - in a manner educational to both the compliance practitioners and their victims - I'd instead recommend the excellent Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (ISBN: 0688128165). I suspect that it heavily influenced The Tipping Point, so you might as well go right to the source first.