I just finished reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.
It's a book that tries to quantify and explain what it takes for an idea or concept to go mainstream or viral. In tone and theme it feels similar to Freakanomics but not as fun. I think this is the loosest book I've read this year which I consider to be career related. I always think it's interesting how some ideas you love don't cross over and other more throw away ones somehow do. I hoped this book would give some insights into how to prepare your ideas or make them more palatable.
Gladwell has a number of concepts he feels explains how ideas move, evolve and take hold and each of those is backed by a case study from the 90's ranging from Airwalk to Hush Puppies and beyond. I'm a little disappointed the 90's examples aren't Sunny Delight and Melissa Joan Hart because to be honest I still can't explain either of those.
The book covers a number of topics like personalities involved in idea's going viral, how to make your message sticky and how context is king. Each time we get a detailed case study and numerous callbacks to earlier ones. It feels like the overall narrative is a little forced. The book offers a lot of insights but I think they are dulled by trying to tie them together into 1 strand.
All in though the book felt long and by the time I got to the part about smoking I was really done in. Even that section has some interesting thoughts and asides but I didn't feel like many of them were actionable. A sense of how these things happened is great but a lot of the time the examples felt so specific that it was hard to pull them into something that is applicable to your day to day challenges in work. The thoughts on making the idea sticky was probably the closest as the maven, salesman and connector thing feels like it's something you either are or aren't.
Would be interested in seeing some of the same analysis put to things like the Ice Bucket Challenge or some modern examples.
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