The Tipping Point By Gladwell Tails

In the opening chapter, Gladwell talks about the increase in the sales of the well-known Hush Puppies shoes throughout the country in the 1990s. Since there were some fashion-forward people who began wearing these Hush Puppies, a word-of-mouth epidemic about the Hush Puppies was created. Later, Gladwell compares this to how a few infected persons can spread disease exponentially throughout a city. He uses specifically the cases of HIV, spreading in such a similar manner, to establishes and introduce the “Law of the Few”.

Throughout The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explains to his reader his ideas about drastic changes in society, and how they seem to occur so rapidly. In this particular selection, Gladwell emphasizes the purpose of “connectors”, saying that they have a “special gift for bringing the world together (page 38)”. Gladwell states that part of the reason information or trends spread like wildfire is the presence of a specific group of people. They are called “connecters”, and they are people who know, or are connected to, people of “different worlds (page 51)”, and bring them together. In his book, The Tipping Point, Gladwell uses different forms of persuasion, rhetorical questions, and organization to

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell looks at a number of social epidemics and analyzes their build up to the point where they tip. “Tipping” is that point where an epidemic booms, or grows, to its maximum potential. Gladwell begins defining “tipping” with a literal example of the famous shoes, Hush Puppies. Once considered old-fashioned, Hush Puppies experienced a social boom in the mid-90s when hipsters in New York made them trendy again. Gladwell continues explaining “tipping” with a medical epidemic of syphilis in Baltimore. Gladwell introduces us to three essential rules of epidemics: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context. The Law of the Few says a key factor in epidemics is the role of the messenger: it

Lastly, Gladwell incorporates the audience’s interests to appeal to them in an emotional and engaging method in the subject of the argument, success. The goal for many is to be successful in their specific craft, and even from the title Outliers: The Story of Success Gladwell advertises his own story of success, and the audience believes if they follow the methods that successful people use then they will be successful too. Gladwell gives testimonies of people that would be predictably successful but never made it far due to not having a community to support them to open opportunities. He describes Chris Langan’s lack of credibility and success despite having a higher IQ than Albert Einstein and before he lets Langan describe a typical day

Gladwell describes what makes some people more successful than others. His central premise focuses on the different opportunities that people receive throughout their lives and how those people use the opportunities to their advantage or disadvantage. Gladwell describes this theory as the Matthew Effect:

Not only does he uses the work of various other people to enhance his point, he adds multiple examples. He addresses the success of people such as Bill Gates and the Beatles and talks about how they became outliers while also using other examples to solidify his argument. While talking about Bill Gates and the Beatles, Gladwell emphasizes that they got the opportunity to get better, that “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” (42) Adding points such as that are what give him that

How big is the world? Some might ponder and the answer is, not as big as it seems. The world isn’t a scary, huge and untouchable place, as it is perceived to be. In reality, the universe is just a blank canvas filled with unique and mesmerizing people. That shapes our world into what it has become. The world would never be what it is without the people living on it. In the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explains the theory of the world and how it seems to be and control everything. Although, it’s the people in the world that make a difference. However people don’t believe they can change and make a difference in the world, but they can. Everyone has the power to change the world and shape their lives and others. Therefore it's up to them to decide if it will be for good or evil. In The Tipping point, Malcolm Gladwell uses the motif of how little things can make a big difference, for example, hush puppies. This motif signifies how the slightest movement in just the right place can change the world completely. We all have the power, but it can just take one to change the world.

b.In “Outliers,” Gladwell asserts his voice on how success does not happen by hard work alone, there are underlying factors: “We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and which the world in which we all grow up and the rule we choose to write as a society doesn’t matter at all” (33).

Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” is radical because he talks about how the environment can change people behavior. The environment could have caused people to change for better or worst. For example: When people were placed in an environment of filth they are more violent and hectic causing the crime rate to increase. When you come from a bad neighborhood you are statistically more likely to be dangerous and belligerent. If you were to place people into a different environment, you can expect change (not saying it always work). Throughout the story Malcolm gives many examples of change. He starts off by talking about four young men who were on a New York train.

Gladwell began the book by describing a “thin-slice”, and then refers to that definition after each example. For instance, when Gladwell describes the “Warren Harding error” -- or the phenomenon where people are selected for jobs simply because they look like they are qualified – he says,

Many phenomena exist within the world; whether it be the butterfly effect, the small world theory, or even the laws of gravity, these entities shape reality. In the book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell analyzes an effect he coins the “tipping point”. The “tipping point” essentially is the point at which small, seemingly insignificant changes become significant enough to cause a large and often times important change . Throughout the text of this novel, Gladwell explores this notion more in-depth; he utilizes real world examples such as the re-emergence of Hush Puppies, a popular footwear item, and dissects the epidemic of the syphilis outbreak in Baltimore, Maryland in order to achieve this purpose. The underlying principles in The

Malcolm Gladwell, tends to follow trends and he tries to discover why some things tend to tip and others don’t. His curiosity about some things “tipping” caught my attention, but I was confused by the way he started the introduction. He begins with a recent fashion trend that seemed to come from nowhere, the Hush Puppies. He tells us that Hush Puppies fell in popularity and once they started appearing in the New York City nightclubs, designers started selling them again. What I disliked was how he started with the shoes because to mean it seemed like it came from nowhere and it was slightly irrelevant. However, when I was putting down the book, I noticed the title of chapter one and it’s The Three Rules of Epidemics and now I think this example

The Tipping Point, written by Malcolm Gladwell, attempts to explain how epidemics start. Malcolm Gladwell defines The Tipping Point as, “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point". This book looks into that point in which ideas someone has, products being sold, and messages from shows spread in the same way a virus does. There are three aspects described in this book which are The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context.

What can one consider being a tipping point in a situation. Is it when a situation changes from bad to worse? Could it be when it changes from good to better? Or could it be from when it changes from a bad situation and all of a sudden it turns around and becomes good? In my essay we are going to explore the tipping point from four different authors: Malcolm Gladwell, Mary G. King, Lynne M. Anderson, and Christine M. Pearson. From subject of: hush puppies, teen suicide, crime, smoking, incivility in the workplace and the black women’s breakthrough into clerical work. There could be many reasons why there were tipping

Perhaps one of the most important points made by Gladwell in this book is that neither analytical nor intuitive thinking is good or bad. But under chaotic conditions, the lesser the information available, the better because information overload can delay decisions, and under pressure, delayed decisions are worse than bad decisions. Gladwell illustrates this with an astonishing example of an experiment where sales of a jam shop were as high as thirty percent more when they had only six types of jam than when they had twenty four.