Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell) 4

i finally got around to reading Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point, and I wasn't disappointed. It's a fun, quick read that provides some good insights into why some ideas / products / concepts spread like wild fire, and others don't. Gladwell pulls from a variety of examples - the steep drop in crime in New York in the 1990's, the spread of syphilis in a poor neighborhood in Baltimore, the incredible rise of the left for dead brand Hush Puppies, and the chilling rise of teen suicide in Micronesia among others. Gladwell believes that there are three primary drivers that causes something to reach a Tipping Point (rapid growth stage): Agents (people with the resources, knowledge, or connections to spread a concept), Stickiness (the message or product itself), and Environment. He gives lots of examples of each of these factors, and really does a good job of getting the reader to think in a different way about how to bring something to critical mass. If I had any complaint about the book, it's that it was very lightweight - more anecdotal than scientific. However this "weakness" makes it a very quick and fun read.