The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and

the idea is very simple.

It is that the best way to understand the emergence
of fashion trends,
or, for that matter, the
transformation of unknown books into bestsellers,
or any number of the other mysterious changes that
mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics.
Ideas and products and messages and behaviors
spread just like viruses do.

THREE CHARACTERISTICS OF EPIDEMICS

1.Contagiousness.
2.The fact that little causes can have big effects.
3.Change happens not gradually but at one dramatic moment.

Think, for a moment, about the concept of contagiousness.

[A video will be shown.]

 Contagiousness, is an unexpected property of all kinds of

things.

 The second of the principles of epidemics that little

changes can somehow have big effects is also a fairly
radical notion.
We are, as humans, heavily socialized to make a kind of rough
approximation between cause and effect.
We are trained to think that what goes into any transaction or
relationship or system must be directly related, in intensity and
dimension, to what comes out.
To appreciate the power of epidemics, we have to abandon this
expectation about proportionality.
We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that sometimes
big changes follow from small events, and that sometimes
these changes can happen very quickly.

 This possibility of sudden change is at the

center of the idea of the Tipping Point and might
well be the hardest of all to accept.
For example, Sharp introduced the first low
priced fax machine in 1984, and by 1989 two
million new machines had gone into operation.
Cellular phones have followed the same
trajectory.

 All epidemics have Tipping Points.

The point of all of this is to answer two simple questions that
lie at the heart of what we would all like to accomplish as
educators, parents, marketers, business people, and
policymakers.
Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or products start
epidemics and others don't?
And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive
epidemics of our own?

 THE THREE RULES OF EPIDEMICS

There is more than one way to tip an epidemic.
The three agents of change The Law of the Few.
The Stickiness Factor.
The Power of Context.

 The Law of the Few is that in a given process or system some

people matter more than others.
Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the
idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the "work" will
be done by 20 percent of the participants.
When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality
becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do
the majority of the work.
For example, John Potterat's analysis of a gonorrhea epidemic
in Colorado.

 The idea of the importance of the stickiness factor in tipping

has enormous implications for the way we regard social
epidemics.
We tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how to make
messages more contagious.
Stickiness means that a message makes an impact. You can't
get it out of your head. It sticks in your memory.
For example, Winston filter-tip cigarettes.

 Epidemics are strongly influenced by their situation by the

circumstances and conditions and particulars of the
environments in which they operate.
Even the smallest and subtlest and most unexpected of factors
can affect the way we act.
For example, the stabbing of Kitty Genovese.

THE LAW OF FEW

Connectors Maven Salesmen

The Law of Few

80:20 principle it is a handful of people who do the
maximum work
The story of Paul Revere
The type of people required to make an epidemic tip
Connectors
Maven
Salesmen

Connectors: The Social

Glue

Very good at making friends and acquaintances

Know a large number of people
Master of weak ties
Span different worlds at the same time

Mavens: Data Banks

Accumulate knowledge
Constant need to share the knowledge
Do not persuade
Problem Solvers
Makes his case so emphatically that he convinces others to buy
his idea

Salesmen: Persuaders

Charismatic
Skills to persuade
Look at the subtle, unspoken and the hidden
What makes them effective:
Small things matter as much as big things
Non verbal cues are as important as verbal cues
Persuasion works in subtle ways

Infect others with their emotion

THE STICKINESS
FACTOR
SESAME STREET

THE LAW OF STICKINESS:

There are specific ways of making a contagious message
memorable, to make it sticky.
The idea was to make television sticky to promote learning
amongst children.

Sesame Street
Founders: Joan G. Cooney, Gerald Lesser & Llyod
Morrisett.
Idea of change: Create a learning epidemic to counter the
prevailing epidemics of poverty and illiteracy.

Obstacles faced & the Solutions:

Early Research suggested that: Good teaching was interactive. It
engages the child individually. It uses all the senses. It responds to the
child. But a television is just a talking box with very low
involvement.
Solution They enlisted some of the top creative minds of the period.
They borrowed techniques from television commercials to teach
children about numbers.
They used the live animation.
They brought in celebrities to sing and dance.

 TV is that it is addictive but passive: In other words,

we don't have to understand what we are looking at,
or absorb what we are seeing, in order to keep
watching.
Solution- Research was conducted by taking a risk
of editing the show in a disorganized manner.

Limitation of Sesame
Street:
A lot of humor was what adults could comprehend.
Anti-narrative in nature.
Stories were attractive for children.

The Power of Context

( Part-1)

 In the 1980, New York was hit by one of its worst crime
epidemics.
In 1990, the epidemic tipped!
From the high in 1990, the crime rate declined more than half.

Why? How? What Changed?

The answer lies in the third principle which is the power of
context.
The environment is also as important as the first two rules.
Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of
the times and places in which they occur.

 The something else: The broken windows theory

If a window is broken and unrepaired, people walking by will
conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon more
windows will be broken. Thus, crime is contagious, it can start
with a broken window and spread to an entire community.

 The cleaning up of New York started with the cleaning up of

the graffiti and fare beating.
The minor, seemingly insignificant crimes were the tipping
points for violent crimes.
When the power of context states that our environment is
important, it does not mean that our inner psychological states
are not responsible for our behavior. An violent crime can be
committed by a psychologically troubled person, but they
would need something extra, something additional which
comes in the form of small signs or signals.

The Power of Context ( Part2)

The magic number 150

 Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood : Rebecca

Wells Sold 2.5 Million Copies
Why did the Ya-Ya Sisterhood turn into an epidemic?
1. The story was beautifully written, it was a
compelling story of friendship and motherdaughter relationship. It spoke to people. It was
sticky.
2. Wells was an actress. She turned readings into
performances. She was a Classic Salesman.
3. Power of Context : The critical role that Groups
play in social epidemics.

 Psychologists say that when people are asked to

make decisions in a group they come to very
different conclusions than when they are asked the
same questions by themselves.
If you want to bring about fundamental change in
peoples belief and behaviour, a change that would
persist and serve as an example to others, you need to
create a community around them where those new
beliefs would be practiced, expressed and nurtured.
( Ya-Ya Sisterhood: Book-group book- tipped it into a
larger word of mouth epidemic)

Small close-knit groups have the power to magnify

the epidemic potential of a message or an idea.

 What are the most effective kinds of

groups ? Is there a simple rule of thumb
that distinguishes a group with real social
authority from a group with little power at
all ? Yes!

Rule of 150
The rule of 150 is a fascinating example of the
strange and unexpected ways in which context
affects the course of social epidemics.

 Social Channel Capacity: most interesting natural

limit.
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar observed
that primates have the biggest brains specifically
the neocortex
(Thought and Reasoning)

 According to Dunbar, group size correlates with

brain size. Larger the neocortex, larger the
average size of the groups they live with.
He said that brains evolve, they get bigger in
order to handle the complexities of large social
groups.

 Humans socialize in the largest group of all

primates.
Dunbar has developed an equation in which he
plugs in the neocortex ratio (size of the neocortex
relative to the size of the brain) of a particular
species and the equation spits out the expected
maximum group size of the animal.
The ratio of Homo Sapiens gives a group estimate
of 147.8 or roughly 150.

 The figure of 150 seems to represent the

maximum number of individuals with whom we
can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind
of relationship that goes with knowing who they
are and how they relate to us.
Eg: Many hunter-gatherer societies, religious
colonies have only 150 people.
Once that line the Tipping Point is crossed,
people begin to behave differently.

 Rule of 150 suggests that the size of a group is a

subtle contextual factor that can make a
difference.
Eg: Gore Associates.

 In order to create one contagious movement, you

often have to create many small movements first!

Conclusion
Focus, Test and Believe

1. Focus your efforts : Starting epidemics requires

concentrating resources on low key areas.
2. Test your Intuitions: To start a social epidemic,
do not just do what you think is right, test your
intuitions.
3. Believe that Change is possible.

Thank You