THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell

The "tipping point" is sort of the straw that broke the camel's back. In other words, it's the factor that causes a trend to become epidemic. Gladwell makes his point that little things make a big difference via a variety of examples. The most distressing was a decade-long epidemic of young male suicides in Micronesia, tipped off by the glamorous and well-publicized suicide of a young man torn between two women. Many of Gladwell's examples, however, are about positive trends, including the unbelievable drop in the crime rate on subways in New York City, which demonstrates the power of context on human behavior. He also explains the rule of 150, which says that 150 is the maximum number of people that can work together effectively. Gore Industries (maker of GORE-TEX fabric), which operates under an unusual horizontal organizational structure, periodically breaks up units that have expanded beyond the 150-person threshold. Gladwell also covers more novel trends such as the comeback of Hush Puppies in the '90's and attributes all such social epidemics to 3 types of people: connectors, mavens, and persuaders. My favorite anecdote is the story of the experiment which gave us the term "six degrees of separation." This is fascinating stuff that should be intuitive but isn't.