Allen Smalling

A new book by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell suggests that the best thing that happened to the book "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" was its lack of publishing-house promotion; that Hush Puppies shoes became a mid-nineties fashion resurgence because, and not in spite of the fact they were on the brink of extinction; and that it was paint rather than police that made the crime rate on New York subways drop.

"The Tipping Point" looks at social phenomena and other forms of communication the way a pathologist sees a virus -- they lie dormant for a while and then suddenly break loose, find that "tipping point" and erupt into a flashfire of recognition. "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood"'s literary merit spread by word of mouth through the Northern California network of women's reading groups, not by any commercial hype. Hush Puppies were first spotted on a few Manhattan trendoids in the mid-1990s and, within a year, mall rats across the U.S. had to have them. The New York City transit system -- a hellhole by anyone's estimation in the 1980s -- gradually pulled itself up into respectability by banishing graffiti, restoring all turnstiles to working order, and cracking down on turnstile jumping, public urination and aggressive panhandling. Following that -- or, more likely, because of that -- the number of serious crimes plummeted.

Things reach the tipping point by "Rule of the Few," not the many. Using Gladwell's language, the few are either Communicators (think Paul Revere or John Wesley), Mavens (the staff of Consumer Report) or Salesmen (high-motivation, enthusiastic types). To achieve the tipping point, the idea, good or service must also have "stickiness"; it must be unique or memorable in some way. Finally, a tipping-point item needs the correct "context": Paul Revere's ride would not have succeeded if he had awakened the populace by yelling "There's a sale on teakettles!"

This book is not without flaws. Gladwell should really have mentioned the "meme" theory of interpersonal communications, which is pretty much standard stuff among communications theorists these days. And some of his allegedly counterintuitive findings can be seen as good common sense. One could say that crime in the subway system went down because the sociocultural context was reconfigured, but it's easier to use traditional language and say that a clean, functional subway station teaches people respect for social institutions and the law.

"The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Mean a Difference"
by Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown & Co. $24.95, 279 pages (08/24/2000)


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