•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 tipConnectorsMavenSalesmen

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 ( Part- 2)

‘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 mother-daughter 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 people’s 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