Tipping Point – Stephen Shu, PhD

Malcolm Gladwell, author of "The Tipping Point," uses the term "maven" to describe very knowledgeable people. These mavens are people who would know instantly whether a particular product is priced 10% too much (whereas the average person would not). They are the types of people voracious for product details in magazines like Consumer Reports and Road & Track. They can be the type of people that call the 800 number on the back of a box of Ivory soap to get the full scoop on what the soap ingredients are. Mavens may be both connoisseurs and fanatics.

Gladwell’s basic premise is that under the right conditions when mavens spread their knowledge to connector-types (networked people) which then in turn spread the knowledge to salesmen-types (charismatic, evangelist people), there is the possibility of information spreading virally. Anything from a mini-epidemic to a major epidemic is possible. The best example I have found on how blog ideas spread (in the context of the Tipping Point framework) can be found here.

Building business models around the concept of mavens, connectors, and salesmen seems like a powerful concept then. Businesses want to sell ideas, products, and services in epidemic proportions for sure.

From my vantage point, the social bookmarks platform del.icio.us is becoming a maven haven for certain Internet resources. As an example, it was there that I near instantly discovered the "wisdom of the del.icio.us crowds" was focusing in on this tremendous compilation of search engines. Never would have found that on my own. In part, I wonder whether the maven haven environment is supported largely by the fact that the user interface can seem so intimidating on first blush (see here for screenshots and screencasts of del.icio.us). I made a recent comment to an organization that might be able to improve its workflow by utilizing del.icio.us, and the comment was made back to me that "less than two people would know how to use it". Applying my high-end MBA quant skills, that means one person, right? Duh.

These observations also lead me to believe that features like different GUI interfaces for tagging Internet resources (as a user configurable preference) and the ability to both restrict use by and generate reports for different groups and demographics of people might be useful for better building businesses. More generally, it would be very valuable to be able to lincoln log together and monitor maven, connector, and salesmen puzzle pieces. The magic of creating business epidemics could then be "reduced" to world-class R&D and reading the tea leaves on introducing products in the right market conditions.

Pipe dream … perhaps. As for improving on the tagging of Internet resources, the search engine companies seems like they could move in this direction, but there also seems like there could be opportunities for some vertical integration plays to control the companies that support the maven (e.g., del.icio.us) and maven-connector (e.g., Technorati) model-based companies. From an empowerment perspective, it’s probably too simplistic to view some of these technologies just as "search engines for blogs" or "tagging and folksomy companies". If the world of finance is any example (albeit finance is a quicker market to adjust to information possession and release), the value of proprietary research and information goes up when a single entity has it and goes down significantly as more and more people have it. On the flip side though, it seems as though overall economic value can go up if the technology is designed such that proprietary solutions can be built on top of trusted and broadly available maven and connector technology foundations.

Steve Shu

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I finally had a chance to complete Malcolm Gladwell’s book, "The Tipping Point." It is an excellent book. My favorite chapter (by far) was the one that covers social analysis and leverage points surrounding swinging the tide of suicide and smoking. If you only have time to read one chapter from that book (and provided that you get some working knowledge of the terms "maven", "connector", "salesmen", and "context"), that is the chapter that touched me most, and one I would recommend to read.

Some things one may have a different perspective on after having read this chapter include understanding:

how one can help today’s youth if the hypothesis is correct that children and adolescents are more influenced by peers than family
what purpose an 800 toll-free support number on the box of a bar of Ivory soap might serve (we all know how to use soap, right?) – note: topic actually covered in the Afterword section
the role of genetics and how it may impact where and when you may need to monitor things in children and adolescents

After reading the book and thinking about my feelings on my favorite chapter, I pleasantly found an Q&A session on BusinessWeek. There you can find the following exchange:

Q: You
spend quite a bit of time in the book talking about how these insights
might really help with a very pressing social need, the whole smoking
issue. I’m curious as to whether anyone has taken you up on that.
A: To be honest, no. When I was writing the book, that was my
favorite chapter, one of the more original parts of the book. I thought
I’d made a contribution. But I haven’t really gotten a lot of feedback
or response from that part of the book. I don’t know why that is.

Maybe it’s sufficiently at odds with the kinds of strategies people
have been following to address this issue. Perhaps I should have been a
bit more diplomatic in my assessment of this issue. It has been a
disappointment, actually.

During my vintage of the MBA degree (late 90s), "The Tipping Point" was not available as it was released in 2000. Without having done a lot of research, I suspect that it may be used in some business schools now (in the process of trying to confirm with some people in my network). It probably makes sense to cover in marketing contexts, but I could see it being covered in organizational behavior classes or special courses on innovation and sales & marketing.

As Malcolm himself admits in other contexts, he is a story writer, not a scientist. While I find his book full of some very interesting statistical information and insight about the scientific method used to reveal some of the patterns, biases, and leverage points that are invisible to the casual observer, in some chapters I had the sense (not confirmed) that a biased path of confirming evidence had been laid out. This is great from a storytelling and persuasion perspective. I speculate that it may make the contents harder to defend from a proven theory point of view.

That said, I’m not a stickler for theory when it comes to something as good as the content of Malcolm’s book. Always remember core business theory. Recognize when things fly in the face of theory. When things conflict with core theory, recognize this and make a contextual choice. But when something new, like Malcolm’s book, is introduced that augments the way we think, I say make a conscience effort to continually renew oneself.

Steve Shu

Tag: Tipping Point

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