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16/8/2006: "Review: Malcolm Gladwell, "The Tipping Point""
In "The Tipping Point", Gladwell examines how small changes can spark "social epidemics" - an idea, message or product gaining popularity or entering society's consciousness in a rapid and exponential manner. He argues that while we tend to think of change as being incremental and trend-based, we must also consider the possibility of drastic, unforeseen change. He then presents his ideas on how one would try to engineer a social epidemic.
According to Gladwell, social epidemics are driven by "a handful of exceptional people", pushing a "sticky" message or idea or product in the appropriate "context". "Exceptional people" refer to Connectors (people who know lots of other people and are able to bring people together, and who hold influence in many different circles), Mavens (people who discover new things and gather knowledge, and who want to share this knowledge with others), and Salesmen (charismatic individuals who are accomplished at convincing the unconvinced).
"Stickiness" is that intangible x-factor that makes a message or product both attention-grabbing and memorable. This makes it easy to communicate and disseminate, and allows it to form the focus of a social epidemic. While Gladwell obviously cannot quantify "stickiness", he argues that the presentation of the product or idea is much more important than its content or nature. Hence, a small tweak to the presentation of an existing product or idea could render it "sticky" and, under the right circumstances, launch it into mass popularity.
Gladwell treats "context" as the environment and circumstances under which the idea or product is presented. He cites a rather chilling (yet entirely plausible) example - the 1964 Kitty Genovese stabbing in New York - to illustrate how humans respond as much to the context as we do to the message itself. Genovese, a young Queens woman, was fatally stabbed. Her screams for help attracted 38 eye-witnesses, but not a single one called the police or came forward to drive off her attacker. Accounts at the time attributed this seeming apathy to the callousness of big-city dwellers. However, two New York psychologists later conducted experiments in which a tester faked an epileptic seizure in a room adjacent to that of an unknowing test subject. When the subjects believed that they were the only ones aware of the seizure, 85 percent of them rushed over to offer help. But, when the subjects were given the impression that there were 4 people in the next room, only 31 percent of them went over. The psychologists concluded that although the message (the tester's "seizure") was identical in both cases, the subject's belief that there were multiple witnesses diffused the responsibility for acting.
The good, the bad, the ugly
Regardless of the accuracy of his overall thesis, Gladwell makes several useful points about the nature of change. Change in X is not simply caused by the introduction of new variables or driving forces, and is not necessarily proportionate to the changes in the existing variables that affect X. An incremental change (e.g. a small increase in the number of Canadian flu carriers visiting the US) can "tip" the balance, causing a controlled flu cluster in the US to become a full-blown, contagious oubreak. It's like the marginal cow in the "Tragedy of the Commons" - grazing 19 cows on an open pasture might be OK, but add an extra cow and the grass is eaten at an unsustainable rate, the pasture is depleted, and all 20 cows die of starvation.
Why does this matter? Because government policy and commercial planning operate on the basis that we can predict the future (or plausible futures) by analysing the direction and magnitude of change of underlying "driving forces" or "trends". Gladwell reminds us that the relationships between variables are not stable - an increase from 2 to 3 cows is very different from an increase from 19 to 20 cows. Take scenario planning's concept of "predetermined factors" - e.g. demographics - which are viewed as stable because we know largely what the age distribution will be in 15 years' time. Under Gladwell's thesis, a Y percent dependency ratio could have no discernible effect, but a Y+5 percent dependency ratio could, in principle, slow down the economy, upset social and family structures, and lower public approval ratings.
Gladwell's idea of social epidemics is less useful. Once you strip off the jargon, it is hardly rocket science that a good and catchy idea or product put forward by charismatic, knowledgeable people under the right circumstances will spread quickly. Even if we take Gladwell's typology of "exceptional individuals" at face value, it is also not obvious whether (and why) social epidemics require Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen to spark off, since Connectors and Salesmen are both vectors for ideas to spread. Missing from Gladwell's thesis, too, is a discussion on the forces that sustain these social epidemics beyond the immediate lifespan afforded by their association with Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen.