Among the more interesting points is the idea that little causes having big effects, which is related to the idea that once you reach a certain amount of initial buyers of a good with network effects, the success of the product will spread rapidly until it reaches a new equilibrium with a much larger amount of users. Malcolm in his book gives this phenomenon a name: “The Law of the Few.”From the The National Science Digital Library comes this student review of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. The review is reproduced in its entirety below;
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Recently in lecture, we’ve been discussing information cascades, network effects, and diffusion through a network. I’ve been catching up on Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, whose title is related to the critical point that can be seen when modeling the sales of a good with a network effect. Malcolm gives his tipping point three characteristics: “one, contagiousness; two, the fact that little causes can have big effects; and three, that change happens not gradually but at one dramatic moment” (Malcolm 9). The tipping point as described in the context of network effects in class is a point where, once reached, many more users will be inclined to buy the good, leading to its success. On the flip side, if the tipping point is not reached, the good will not succeed because everyone expects that no one will buy the good, and the good’s value is lost without other users.
Among the more interesting points is the idea that little causes having big effects, which is related to the idea that once you reach a certain amount of initial buyers of a good with network effects, the success of the product will spread rapidly until it reaches a new equilibrium with a much larger amount of users. Malcolm in his book gives this phenomenon a name: “The Law of the Few.” He explains that though few people can bring about large change, not everyone is capable of doing so; only those with certain types of influence, whom he refers to as connectors, mavens, and salesmen, can actually cause something to “tip” (Malcolm 30). This is very much related to the idea of diffusion in networks, and how a few initial adopters can cause a cascade to ripple throughout the network. The existence of clusters is what limits the spread of these cascades. Malcom’s connectors are the kind of people who know everyone – they connect the clusters present in networks, and thus facilitate the spread of a cascade from one cluster to another. Mavens are described as “data banks,” or those who provide messages so that connectors can spread it. Mavens are thus what can be seen as the initial adopters of a good; even if the rest of the network is already using a different product, mavens are the ones that can introduce a different, perhaps better product to the rest of the network, which is something they found through large amounts of research and information digging. Without the initial change instigated by the mavens, nothing would change in the network, even with the presence of connectors. Finally, though perhaps less connected to ideas in class, is the idea of salesmen – that is, the people who “persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing” (Malcolm 70).
In general, Malcom’s Tipping Point is a very interesting book that ties in well with what we are discussing in class, and gives a number of real life examples of how each phenomenon plays into our society today.
