CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
June 2001, Vol. 43, No.
I first read The Tipping Point about a year ago. I was reminded of it a few months ago when the book was a sort of co-respondent in a juicy literary "divorce." Little Brown's embattled publisher, Sarah Crichton, (yes, Michael's daughter) was fired in February by LB's parent company, Time Warner. Laurence Kirshbaum, Time Warner's publishing chairman, cited The Tipping Point as an example of Ms. Crichton's incompetence. Although the book sold very well, Kirshbaum claimed that it could have done better if Ms. Crichton had marketed it aggressively. He complained that even the cover was dull, apparently missing the subtlety of an unlit match placed over the subtitle, How Little Things Can Make a Difference.Malcolm Gladwell maintains that ideas can spread like infectious diseases. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave. Gladwell's thesis is that "these are social epidemics." The moment they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the tipping point, "that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once."
Gladwell's first tenet is "the messenger matters." The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere illustrates how a few key people can start an epidemic. William Dawes warned the colonists about the British that night, but did not get the response that Revere did. Why not? Gregarious and intensely social, Revere was a "connector" with a gift for bringing people together, a man blessed with an "uncanny genius for being at the center of events."
Revere was also a maven, one who accumulates knowledge and then tells others. After the Boston Tea Party, he quickly emerged as a link among revolutionary groups, an unofficial clearinghouse for anti-British forces. He was the logical one to go to if you were the stable boy who overheard British officers on April 18, 1775 discussing how there would be hell to pay the following afternoon. When Revere set out for Lexington, he would have known just whose door to knock on in order to spread the word. William Dawes? He was an ordinary man with the normal social circle. He probably did not know whose door to knock on. Word of mouth epidemics are the work of connectors and mavens.
How does one turn around a destructive social epidemic once it has reached its tipping point? Remember New York City in the Eighties? As Gladwell tells it, "Every one of the 6,000 cars on the Transit Authority fleet, with the exception of the Midtown shuttle, was covered with graffiti. In winter, the cars were cold; in summer, there was no air conditioning. Fare-beating was so commonplace that the Transit Authority lost $150 million annually. From 15,000 to 20,000 felonies were committed on the trains every year."
Gladwell claims the turnaround was due to the "law of the few," and the power of context. The subway was suffering from the "Broken Windows" theory--no one cares; no one is in charge. Graffiti equals public disorder; aggressive panhandling equals an invitation to more serious crimes. The tipping point occurred when a new subway conductor set out to win the graffiti battle. There would be no retreat: once a car was reclaimed, it was never allowed to get dirty again.
From 1984 to 1990, William Bratton, head of the transit police, cracked down on fare beaters, rather than on felonies. When Mayor Giuliani made him police chief in 1994, he cracked down first on quality of life crimes. As Gladwell says, "an epidemic can be tipped by tinkering with the smallest detail of the environment."
Librarians might like to know how an unknown novelist reaches the tipping point to become a best-selling author. Gladwell explains that the Ya Ya Sisterhood tipped both because of its stickiness factor, and the power of context, specifically the critical role that groups play in social epidemics. The messenger matters, but so does the content; it must be memorable and stick with the reader.
The first bestseller list on which Ya-Ya Sisterhood appeared was the Northern California Independent Booksellers' List. Explains Gladwell, "The San Francisco area is home to one of the country's strongest book-group cultures, and from the beginning Ya-Ya was a book-group book." Because Ya-Ya was being talked about and read in groups, the book became that much stickier. It's easier to remember and appreciate something if you discuss it with your friends; it becomes a social experience. Ya-Ya's roots in book-group culture tipped it into a larger word-of-mouth epidemic.
If you want to "tip" an epidemic, employ connectors and mavens to deliver the message; make sure the content is sticky enough to be remembered; don't underestimate the power of people in groups, and remember that little things make a big difference.
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