I'm a huge fan of Blink. I think it's the best quasi-business book I've ever read. I'd love to write a book like that someday. But I've never been able to get through The Tipping Point, and I've never quite been sure why. People LOVE that book. When it came out, it felt like everybody was recommending it to me. I bought it. I tried to read it. I got 80 or 10 pages in, and I put it down, never to pick it up again, without really a clear idea why.
I just came across an article in the February 2008 Fast Company called Is the Tipping Point Toast? by Clive Thompson, and I suddenly have some idea why I never connected with The Tipping Point. The Tipping Point posits that there are certain people that are really important, who make things happen, the influentials. This idea underlies the way a lot of marketing is done these days: get to the influentials, and you'll get to everybody. The article in Fast Company covers the research of Duncan Watts, who contends that reaching the tipping point doesn't have much of anything to do with reaching the so-called "influentials," that it's just about a good idea connecting with people, and that anyone can be a connector, anyone can be an influencer, anyone can make an idea tip over the edge.
This idea, as opposed to the common marketing idea that there are a limited number of "cool kids" who make trends happen, really resonates with me. One of the things I learned from working on FIGMENT last summer is that if you have a good idea, and that people believe in it, it will happen. Sure, the "cool kids" who have lots of friends and who won't stop talking about something help, but that's not the important thing... the important thing is having the right idea in the first place, so that EVERYBODY wants to spread the word, whether they're a cool kid or not. We are all participants here, no matter how "cool" we are.
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