Monday, January 19, 2004

Book Review - The Tipping Point The book "The Tipping Point", by Malcolm Gladwell, has been out for a while. I just finished reading it, took me about a week... ah, the benefits of no more school! Here's some notes. Gladwell tries to describe the tipping point mechanisms of social epidemics, such as word-of-mouth marketing, fashion fads, and crime waves. As he sees it, there are basically four rules to social epidemics: The Law of the Few - in social networks, there are connectors, mavens, and salespeople. Connectors are people who know lots of people. Mavens are people who know lots of things about particular subjects. Salespeople are people who can find or share a vibe with an audience. Between these three kinds of people, ideas spread. The Stickiness Factor - presentation of information is key to retention and action. Gladwell goes into great detail describing the mechanisms that make Sesame Street and Blues Clues so wildly popular with young children. Based on circa 1960s academic thinking on child development, Sesame Street uses a video magazine format, 3 minute segments, and mixed fantasy and human characters to teach basic knowledge such as numbers and letters. Developed from more recent child development theories, Blues Clues implements a single story arc to keep children engaged for a full 30 minutes. In both cases, simple changes to the content have had profound effects on its stickiness with children. (I personally found these discussions very enlightening, and now I watch these shows with my son with a keener eye.) The Power of Context, Broken Windows - simple environmental traits can have a dramatic impact on the people in that environment. For instance, Gladwell describes the crime epidemic in New York in the 1980s, and how removing graffiti and cracking down on turnstile jumping, relatively low-level crimes, had dramatic effects on the entire crime rate. The Broken Window theory suggests that subtle queues like broken windows make people care less about other aspects of the environment, crime raises, and the cycle feeds on itself. By fixing the little things, the feedback loop is cut. The Power of Context, Magic 150 - group dynamics break down after it reached 150 people. From decades of experience, the U.S. army organizes its troops into groups of less than 200 soldiers each. Businesses like Gore, Inc. do this as well, with amazing effects. On a physiological level, the size of the neocortex is directly proportional to the number of social connections that animals can maintain. If you're building teams, keep them under 150 people, and if they grow larger, split them up to keep group unity and performance high. As with most books, these are interesting points to ponder. His case study on teen smoking didn't quite connect for me, though, and was poorly related to a teen suicide epidemic in the remote island nation of Micronesia. In his after-word, he addresses this ill-formed comparison, and makes a stronger identification of the rash of Columbine-like incidents in schools across the U.S. (It seems to me that the Law of the Few and the Stickiness Factor have little influence on this epidemic, and that we must focus our attention on the broken windows.) Gladwell also addresses the impact that the Internet has, with all its new communications channels, on social epidemics. His argument is that many of these channels are being overloaded, and once again, we must resort to personal connections in order to filter useful and wanted information. I think we're seeing this now with the faltering of email under the burden of spam, and perhaps with the rise of weblogs as personal broadcasts. Finally, Gladwell offers a very compelling case study. A nurse in San Diego wanted to spread the word about diabetes, but found traditional forums lacking. So, she turned to beauty salons. She took the beauticians, who are often natural connectors, and turned them into mavens. She also seized on the captive environment of a beauty salon, where women spend anywhere from 2 to 8 hours at a time. All in all, a good read. The key takeaway for me is that an epidemic doesn't need to follow all of these laws to spread, but rather, focusing on any one of these laws can have a significant impact on the rise or fall of an epidemic. (I'm also reading Electric Meme and Crossing the Chasm... I suspect there's going to be a lot of overlap here :-) 11:13:47 PM    trackback []

Creative Class - flocking elsewhere? This one is for Paulette: Richard Florida, economic development guru and originator of the Creative Class meme wrote a thought-provoking, thorough, almost polemical essay in the Washington Monthly. His thesis: that current U.S. policy discourages creative and intelligent individuals from coming to this country. While homegrown talent may be seeking greener pastures abroad, the big problem is that top scientists, artists & entrepreneurs no longer see America as the place they have to be. Florida places the blame squarely on the Bush administration's post-911 xenophobia. The Smart Mob implications for this are that talent will flow to the most receptive communities. Greater mobility for individuals, greater economic value for individual skills, and a global information network create the conditions for the creatives and the thinkers to flock to wherever conditions are more favorable. Thanks to Alex and Jim! [Smart Mobs] 10:04:33 PM    trackback []