What do syphilis in Baltimore, Sesame Street, Hush Puppies shoes, and crime reduction in New York City all have in common? They are all epidemics. They started with a small group of people, reached some ethereal level and exploded across a community, be it local, national, or worldwide. They are also prominently featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell examines epidemics to explore the reasons why these disparate things have been able to affect so many people. He seems personally most interested in those epidemics that can make a positive difference in people's lives, such as the learning epidemics caused by Sesame Street and Blues Clues. Regardless, he traces the elements involved in the spread of many different epidemics–be they fashion statements, non-crime waves or messages such as Paul Revere's famous cry of impending battle.
Central to the book is the idea of a tipping point: An idea, fashion statement or germ--a contagion--may exist at some basal level within a population, infecting roughly the same number of people that overcome it in any given time period. Some stimulus can cause an imbalance in this equilibrium, though, and the contagion will start to reach more new people than it leaves behind. This is the tipping point, and an epidemic follows. Without that push to disrupt the equilibrium, it may never reach that critical mass, that threshold it needs to cross in order to infect the whole population. Gladwell's analysis of epidemics centers around this idea: How can we identify strategies to "tip" phenomena into epidemics?
The idea of an equilibrium is central to the analyses that engineers (like me) perform. Every analysis begins with a system (such as a rope supporting some hanging weight) and a basis of evaluating that system (such as the system's momentum). Due to the conservation of momentum, which states that momentum cannot be created or destroyed, every bit of momentum that enters the system will either be accumulated, or it must leave the system in some way. Equilibrium occurs when the accumulation term is zero: then everything that enters the system also leaves the system. In the case of momentum, accumulation results in motion. The rope with the hanging weight is at rest, so it is not accumulating momentum, and it is in equilibrium. (Incidentally, this means that the sum of forces acting on it is zero, and the tension in the rope can be calculated.) The upshot of this is that equilibria can be described mathematically. As soon as Gladwell mentioned the word 'equilibrium', I began to formulate a mathematical model to track the spread of an epidemic throughout a population.
The model works roughly thus: The system is a population of individuals, and the quantity being tracked is the spread of a particular contagion. Each member of the population in question would have a state, either "infected" or "not infected." They would also contact "x" number of people in a given time step "t", and, if infected, have a "y"% chance of "infecting" each of the people they came into contact with. Each individual would remain infected for "z" time steps. Each of these variables would be different for each person in the population (except for the time step, which would necessarily be the same for all), and, when all members of the population were considered, the total spread of the contagion could be tracked. You could predict the percent of a population "infected" with some contagion after a time period by setting an initial condition (maybe only one individual is infected to start with) and extrapolating to the desired number of time steps. Just as Gladwell attempts to cut to the heart of the issue, this is the simplest model I could think of to describe the spread of a contagion.
Gladwell defines the transmission of epidemics by three laws. The first of these, "The Law of the Few," explores three special types of people that can help an idea become an epidemic: his “Connectors,” “Salespeople” and "Mavens." These are the people who can tip that contagion over the edge into boundless effect. In my model, these are people who have exceptional coefficients "x", "y", and "z". The first of these, the Connectors, spread contagions exceptionally well simply by the sheer magnitude of people they know. Their "x" is through the roof. If I am studying the spread of the newest pop hit, “Bulletproof” by La Roux, an average person would pass the song along to maybe two people per day. The Connectors would get ten people to listen to it: they know more people, they are in contact with them more, and their contact is meaningful. These people have huge social networks.
What if you don’t like pop? Especially dance pop from the UK, like "Bulletproof"? Gladwell’s Salespeople will convince you that you do. Their "y" is near 100%: they have the ability to transmit ideas to everyone they meet. Gladwell’s Mavens are an interesting case. These people are experts in a narrow field. As a result, they hold a lot of sway when giving advice about that field, and people they "infect" are likely to stick with whatever the Maven is spreading. Given the right contagion--something in their field--they have a high "y," and the "z" of those they infect is likely to rise. Mavens also practice selection among contagions--they will only select the best. The case of the Maven may not apply as well to the spread of a pop hit. Maybe a music reviewer would be a maven, and a favorable review would encourage others to listen.
In this way, these three types of people infect more than their fair share; they diffuse ideas farther than normal people. Whether from sheer numbers as with the Connectors, from careful selection as with the Mavens, or with efficacy of transmission as with the Salespeople, these special individuals have the ability to tip things into epidemics. Gladwell identified them through studying epidemics he was familiar with and by thinking about extraordinary people he knew. I could also have identified them by analysis of my model: They are the individuals with exceptional coefficients.
When evaluating any system that is described by a model, it is helpful to explore the ramifications that changing each variable of the model has. This is accomplished by holding all the variables except one constant and then manipulating that one. Alternatively, one variable can be held constant and the others changed to identify the restrictions imposed by that variable on the system. In this way, the effects of each variable, that is, each critical component of the system, can be identified. Just by looking at my simple model, I disagree that the three types of people who are Gladwell's Few would be the only ones who would have the power to transform a contagion into an epidemic–There are other ways to manipulate the "x," "y" and "z" values to produce extraordinary individuals. What about someone with a high "z" who harbors a contagion for a long time–a 'Convert?' These people would be able to upset the equilibrium by transmitting the contagion for a long time–they will be singing “Bulletproof” for weeks rather than just the day or two after they hear it, and they will be able to tip this phenomenon just like the Few can. Although Gladwell did not uncover any such others through his exploration of epidemics, a simple analysis of the model shows that more types of individuals with the power to tip things could exist. If we are interested in the identification of individuals to help us tip our own epidemics, shouldn't we spread the net as far as possible?
What about the media? It turns out that people do not only communicate on a one-to-one basis. The media are an alternate route to the Few for tipping epidemics. Sort of like super-Connectors, the media have a huge audience to whom they can spread information. Indeed, as Gladwell addresses his second criteria, “The Stickiness Factor,” he talks about children's television as a vehicle for learning epidemics, a case in which messages are disseminated entirely by the media, not by the Few. Even if the media are considered within Gladwell's framework as individual Connectors (or as one big mega-Connector), they throw the whole system out of whack due to the huge audience they command, orders of magnitude higher than anything that could be achieved by one of the Few. Why should we even bother looking for these Few if the conglomerate media is the ultimate Connector, and can tip our ideas into epidemics?
The internet is a medium that blurs the distinction between the Few and the general population. Through the proliferation of email, blogs, forums and social networking sites, we are able to communicate with each other much more rapidly and voluminously than nine years ago when Gladwell wrote his book. For my model, this means that everybody's "x" is elevated: we are all pseudo-Connectors. Connectors are no longer critical links in the chain that connects the population. I can message hundreds of people with the click of a mouse on Facebook, and link them to “Bulletproof” on Youtube. This glut of information necessarily devalues it: We as listeners cannot pay attention to it all. Mavens are drowned out by thousands of their peers reviewing the same items on Amazon; however, maybe this connectedness would allow an ultimate Maven to exist. The internet would empower the Maven to reach a huge audience. Maybe the Few can draw on the internet just as others do. Regardless, new forms of communication have changed the roles of the Few.
One very important distinction heretofore not considered is that different individuals will have different reactions to different contagions. A Maven is a perfect example: they will only have 'tipping power' for things they are experts at. From the perspective of my model, this means that considering different contagions requires the calculation of new coefficients for each individual. This presents a huge task, and there may be no way to correctly identify what the coefficients are; indeed this goes beyond tracking the spread of an epidemic, and instead delves into the realm of innovation, discovering new contagions. My model is not a useful tool for finding which things will spread, but rather how they will spread. The contagion up until this point has been an abstraction. To more fully explore the spread of epidemics, Gladwell turns his attention to the message that is being spread.
Gladwell's second law is the "Stickiness Factor," with which he explores the reason that some things are contagions--why do they 'stick' to us? He here focuses not on the population through which the epidemic spreads, or the Few who tip it; he looks at the contents of the contagion. The Few can’t do anything with an impotent virus or a worthless idea. It must be "sticky" enough to be absorbed before it can be passed on.
As his primary examples for this law, Gladwell highlights the television programs Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. He shows them as examples of intentionally engineering the 'stickiness' of a message, in this case increasing the stickiness of learning for children. The creators of Sesame Street studied children and what was sticky with them. They then tailored their show to meet those criteria. The sticky factor came not just from the information, but also the way it was presented, catering to children’s short attention spans. Blue’s Clues took the information and success of Sesame Street to another level by further developing the stickiness of the information, repeating it five times every week. This is a very interesting concept, that presentation can change the stickiness of a message without altering the content.
This stickiness factor is not taken into account in my simple model. It is assumed that the contagion will be sticky, that it can be transmitted, and that it will spread. This is the case for most of the things we typically consider contagions, i.e. diseases. With the example of education, Gladwell shows how non-inherently transmissible things can also become contagions. This has huge implications: We can engineer virtually anything to become an epidemic if we can figure out how to make it sticky. We can spread information, ideas and positive change just like H1N1 has spread across the world, if we only figure out how to make our information stickier.
My model is much too simplistic to describe a real-world epidemic, but so is Gladwell's commentary up to this point. He had been hinting at it, like when he described some indefinable quality that some Salespeople posses, but he truly explores the issue in the third section of the book, "The Power of Context." Here he states the very obvious point that circumstances matter. People and ideas do not exist in vacuums. There is more than just stickiness and personality type at play. We as humans have complex subconscious psychological processes that pick up on subtle environmental cues we may not even be aware of. If the song “Bulletproof” is used as a theoretical example in a class project, the context informs the reader that it is not meant as a serious suggestion. The would-be epidemic tipper needs to consider the context that the message will be transmitted in.
Within a population, up until this point, only the transmitters of epidemics (The Connectors, the Mavens, and the Salespeople) have been considered, but the recipient of the transmission is just as important. Communication is a complicated subject that demands a lot from both the sender and the receiver to be effective. The great managerial writer, Drucker, addressed this in a 1974 essay called "Functioning Communications." He delineates there the effort required by the communicator to reach the listener due to differences in mental processes. Communications can fall upon deaf ears when the communicator fails to take into account the listener's mindset. People hear what they want to hear. People's brains are hard-wired to process stimuli in certain fashions. Drucker writes how communication is almost a battle: As the communicator, you have to bring the listener around to your way of thinking. You have to bypass the natural route in the listener's mind and develop new pathways. Otherwise, they will hear what they want to hear, and not what you want them to hear.
Effective communication from the communicator's standpoint demands messages that speak to the audience. Effective communication from the listener's standpoint demands a receptive attitude and a commitment to the consideration of new ideas. This is a hard thing to accomplish when so much of the information processing that goes on in our brains occurs below our consciousness. It's almost like holding you breath: you can only do it for so long before your natural processes take over. For Gladwell, this is addressed as Context. Some messages can be groomed for mass audiences (like Sesame Street), but I think enough variation exists to provide significant barriers for the universal transmission of most messages.
Should my model include another variable, "w," for the receptiveness of an individual to the spreading contagion? This would make the model more robust by considering the receiver's situation. At the same time, it would add another level of difficulty to the actual application of the model to a given system. Defining each individual's "x" should be rather straightforward, and it should be proportional to the number of people they know. Defining each person's "z" depends on how long they are likely to hold on to the contagion in question. The "y" and "w" terms, though, are highly subjective and variable, and depend on the intricacies of interpersonal communication. Each individual's "y" and "w" would change not only with the contagion, but also with the other members of the population with whom the individual interacts. One individual (let's call him Dave) will have a different "y" depending on how effective his communication of the message to another member of the population. Dave's "w" will also change depending on how receptive he is to others' communications. Although the model may describe the spread of an epidemic sufficiently, setting it up, that is, defining the variables, is nearly impossible.
Gladwell devotes considerable space toward discussing nuanced studies of various epidemics, and how his three laws played into them. One example I found particularly interesting told of suicide in the nation of Micronesia: Unheard of before a teenager took his life in the 1960s over a minor disagreement with his parents, a suicide epidemic soon swept the nation. The power of context played a powerful role here: that first suicide gave permission for the rest. Stickiness was important too: suicide, unfortunately, is absolutely sticky, and there is no way to make it less sticky. Try it once, and you are dead. One thing this example lacked, though, was any tie-in to the Few. No Connectors advertised suicide to their many acquaintances, no Mavens told the best methods, and no Salesmen advocated their friends try it. As far as I can tell, the first suicide was reported in the newspapers, and the epidemic spread; the media again was the culprit for tipping this epidemic.
This is indicative of the book as a whole: Gladwell presents a wealth of provocative ideas, a wealth of interesting examples, and a wealth of succinct conclusions. His writing is expertly woven and watertight. His book is chock full of marvelous anecdotes; however, nowhere does he give an example that effectively demonstrates the importance of all of his three laws in causing epidemics to tip. This does not mean his ideas are worthless; rather, he has presented tools that can be used to create change in society, in our thinking patterns, and in the way we spread our messages. If we want to spread things that really matter, such as anti-crime waves and learning, we need to identify ways that will help these things, which are not inherently transmitted, to spread to epidemic proportions. Seen as a historical reckoning of the factors involved in the spread of epidemics, Gladwell's Tipping Point excels. He fails, however, as I did, to define a general model that we can use to predict the spread of epidemics.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Review of The Tipping Point -- draft 3
Draft three: added a lot of commentary. Further explored the model I've been talking about in several locations throughout the review. Restructured the discussion of the media and the internet, but it's still not right. Pruned some areas that, while interesting, didn't tie in to anything else. I think this is really close to a final version to be posted late today.
What do syphilis in Baltimore, Sesame Street, Hush Puppies shoes, and crime reduction in New York City all have in common? They are all epidemics. They started with a small group of people, reached some ethereal level and exploded across a community, be it local, national, or worldwide. They are also prominently featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell examines epidemics to explore the reasons why these disparate things have been able to affect so many people. He seems personally most interested in those epidemics that can make a positive difference in people's lives, such as the learning epidemics caused by Sesame Street and Blues Clues. Regardless, he traces the elements involved in the spread of many different epidemics–be they fashion statements, non-crime waves or messages such as Paul Revere's famous cry of impending battle.
Central to the book is the idea of a tipping point: An idea, fashion statement or germ--a contagion--may exist at some basal level within a population, infecting roughly the same number of people that overcome it in any given time period. Some stimulus can cause an imbalance in this equilibrium, though, and the contagion will start to reach more new people than it leaves behind. This is the tipping point, and an epidemic follows. Without that push to disrupt the equilibrium, it may never reach that critical mass, that threshold it needs to cross in order to infect the whole population. Gladwell's analysis of epidemics centers around this idea: How can we identify strategies to "tip" phenomena into epidemics?
The idea of an equilibrium is central to the analyses that engineers (like me) perform, and is central to our way of thinking. Every analysis begins with a system (such as a rope that supports a free hanging weight) and a basis of evaluating that system (such as the system's momentum). Due to conservation laws, in this case the conservation of momentum, which states that momentum cannot be created or destroyed, every bit of momentum that enters the system will either be accumulated, or it will leave the system in some way. Equilibrium occurs when the accumulation term is zero, and then everything that enters the system also leaves the system; an accumulation of momentum results in motion. The rope with the hanging weight is at rest, so it is not accumulating momentum, and it is in equilibrium. (Incidentally, this means that the sum of forces acting on it is zero, and the tension in the rope can be calculated.) The upshot of this is that equilibria can be described mathematically. As soon as Gladwell mentioned the word 'equilibrium', I began to formulate a mathematical model to track the spread of an epidemic throughout a population.
The model works roughly thus: The system is a population of individuals, and the quantity being tracked is the spread of a particular contagion (which is not conserved as momentum is; however, the same analysis can be used to track it). Each member of the population in question would have a state, either "infected" or "not infected." They would also contact "x" number of people in a given time step "t", and, if infected, have a "y"% chance of "infecting" each of the people they came into contact with. Each individual would remain infected for "z" time steps. Each of these variables would be different for each person in the population (except for the time step, which would necessarily be the same for all), and, when all members of the population were considered, the total spread of the contagion could be tracked. You could predict the percent of a population "infected" with some contagion after a time period by setting an initial condition (maybe only one individual is infected to start with) and extrapolating to the desired number of time steps. Just as Gladwell attempts to cut to the heart of the issue, this is the simplest model I could think of to describe the spread of a contagion.
Gladwell defines the transmission of epidemics by three laws. The first of these, "The Law of the Few," explores three special types of people that can help an idea become an epidemic: his “Connectors,” “Salespeople” and "Mavens." These are the people who can tip that contagion over the edge into boundless effect. In my model, these are people who have exceptional coefficients "x", "y", and "z". The first of these, the Connectors, spread contagions exceptionally well simply by the sheer magnitude of people they know. Their "x" is through the roof. If I am studying the spread of the newest pop hit, “Bulletproof” by La Roux, an average person would pass the song along to maybe two people per day. The Connectors would get ten people to listen to it: they know more people, they are in contact with them more, and their contact is meaningful. These people have huge social networks.
What if you don’t like pop? Especially dance pop from the UK, like "Bulletproof"? Gladwell’s Salespeople will convince you that you do. Their "y" is near 100%: they have the ability to transmit ideas to everyone they meet. Gladwell’s Mavens are an interesting case. These people are experts in a narrow field. As a result, they hold a lot of sway when giving advice about that field, and people they "infect" are likely to stick with whatever the Maven is spreading. Given the right contagion--something in their field--they have a high "y," and the "z" of those they infect is likely to rise. Mavens also practice selection among contagions--they will only select the best. The case of the Maven may not apply as well to the spread of a pop hit. Maybe a music reviewer would be a maven, and a favorable review would encourage others to listen.
In this way, these three types of people infect more than their fair share; they diffuse ideas farther than normal people. Whether from sheer numbers as with the Connectors, from careful selection as with the Mavens, or with efficacy of transmission as with the Salespeople, these special individuals have the ability to tip things into epidemics. Gladwell identified them through studying epidemics he was familiar with and by thinking about extraordinary people he knew. I could also have identified them by analysis of my model: They are individuals with exceptional coefficients.
When evaluating any system that is described by a model, it is helpful to explore the ramifications that changing each variable of the model has. This is accomplished by holding all the variables except one constant and then manipulating that one. Alternatively, one variable can be held constant and the others changed to identify the restrictions imposed by that variable on the system. In this way, the effects of each variable, that is, each critical component of the system, can be identified. Just by looking at my simple model, I disagree that the three types of people who are Gladwell's Few would be the only ones who would have the power to transform a contagion into an epidemic–There are other ways to manipulate the "x," "y" and "z" values to produce extraordinary individuals. What about someone with a high "z" who harbors a contagion for a long time–a 'Convert?' These people would be able to upset the equilibrium by transmitting the contagion for a long time–they will be singing “Bulletproof” for weeks rather than just the day or two after they hear it, and they will be able to tip this phenomenon just like the Few can. Although Gladwell did not uncover any such others through his exploration of epidemics, a simple analysis of the model shows that more types of individuals with the power to tip things could exist. If we are interested in the identification of individuals to help us tip our own epidemics, shouldn't we spread the net as far as possible?
What about the media? It turns out that people do not only communicate face to face. The media are an alternate route to the Few for tipping epidemics. Sort of like super-Connectors, the media have a huge audience to whom they can spread information. Indeed, as Gladwell addresses his second criteria, “The Stickiness Factor,” he talks about children's television as a vehicle for learning epidemics, a case in which messages are disseminated entirely by the media, not by the Few. Even if the media are considered as individual Connectors (or as one big mega-Connector), they throw the whole system out of whack due to the huge audience they command, orders of magnitude higher than anything that could be achieved by one of the Few. Why should we even bother looking for these Few if the conglomerate media is the ultimate Connector, and can tip our ideas into epidemics?
The internet is a medium that blurs the distinction between the Few and the general population. Through the proliferation of email, blogs, forums and social networking sites, we are able to communicate with each other much more rapidly and voluminously than nine years ago when Gladwell wrote his book. For my model, this means that everybody's "x" is elevated: we are all pseudo-Connectors. Connectors are no longer critical links in the chain that connects the population. I can message hundreds of people with the click of a mouse on Facebook, and link them to “Bulletproof” on Youtube. This glut of information necessarily devalues it: We as listeners cannot pay attention to it all. Mavens are drowned out by thousands of their peers reviewing the same items on Amazon; however, maybe this connectedness would allow an ultimate Maven to exist. The internet would empower the Maven to reach a huge audience. Maybe the Few can draw on the internet just as others do. Regardless, new forms of communication have changed the roles of the Few.
One very important distinction heretofore not considered is that different individuals will have different reactions to different contagions. A Maven is a perfect example: they will only have 'tipping power' for things they are experts at. From the perspective of my model, this means that considering different contagions requires the calculation of new coefficients for each individual. This presents a huge task, and there may be no way to correctly identify what the coefficients are; indeed this goes beyond tracking the spread of an epidemic, and instead delves into the realm of innovation, discovering new contagions. My model is not a useful tool for finding which things will spread, but rather how they will spread. The contagion up until this point has been an abstraction. To more fully explore the spread of epidemics, Gladwell turns his attention to the message that is being spread.
Gladwell's second law is the "Stickiness Factor," with which he explores the reason that some things are contagions--why do they 'stick' to us? He here focuses not on the population through which the epidemic spreads, or the Few who tip it; he looks at the contents of the contagion. The Few can’t do anything with an impotent virus or a worthless idea. It must be "sticky" enough to be absorbed before it can be passed on.
As his primary examples for this law, Gladwell highlights the television programs Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. He shows them as examples of intentionally engineering the 'stickiness' of a message, in this case increasing the stickiness of learning for children. The creators of Sesame Street studied children and what was sticky with them. They then tailored their show to meet those criteria. The sticky factor came not just from the information, but also the way it was presented, catering to children’s short attention spans. Blue’s Clues took the information and success of Sesame Street to another level by further developing the stickiness of the information, repeating it five times every week. This is a very interesting concept, that presentation can change the stickiness of a message without altering the content.
This stickiness factor is not taken into account in my simple model. It is assumed that the contagion will be sticky, that it can be transmitted, and that it will spread. This is the case for most of the things we typically consider contagions, i.e. diseases. With the example of education, Gladwell shows how non-inherently transmissible things can also become contagions. This has huge implications: We can engineer virtually anything to become an epidemic if we can figure out how to make it sticky. We can spread information, ideas and positive change just like H1N1 has spread across the world, if we only figure out how to make our information stickier.
My model is much too simplistic to describe a real-world epidemic, but so is Gladwell's commentary up to this point. He had been hinting at it, like when he described some indefinable quality that some Salespeople posses, but he truly explores the issue in the third section of the book, "The Power of Context." Here he states the very obvious point that circumstances matter. People and ideas do not exist in vacuums. There is more than just stickiness and personality type at play. We as humans have complex subconscious psychological processes that pick up on subtle environmental cues we may not even be aware of. If the song “Bulletproof” is used as a theoretical example in a class project, the context informs the reader that it is not meant as a serious suggestion. The would-be epidemic tipper needs to consider the context that the message will be transmitted in.
Within a population, up until this point, only the transmitters of epidemics (The Connectors, the Mavens, and the Salespeople) have been considered, but the recipient of the transmission is just as important. Communication is a complicated subject that demands a lot from both the sender and the receiver to be effective. The great managerial writer, Drucker, addressed this in a 1974 essay called "Functioning Communications." He delineates there the effort required by the communicator to reach the listener due to differences in mental processes. Communications can fall upon deaf ears when the communicator fails to take into account the listener's mindset. People hear what they want to hear. People's brains are hard-wired to process stimuli in certain fashions. Drucker writes how communication is almost a battle: As the communicator, you have to bring the listener around to your way of thinking. You have to bypass the natural route in the listener's mind and develop new pathways. Otherwise, they will hear what they want to hear, and not what you want them to hear.
Effective communication from the communicator's standpoint demands messages that speak to the audience. Effective communication from the listener's standpoint demands a receptive attitude and a commitment to the consideration of new ideas. This is a hard thing to accomplish when so much of the information processing that goes on in our brains occurs below our consciousness. It's almost like holding you breath: you can only do it for so long before your natural processes take over. For Gladwell, this is addressed as Context. Some messages can be groomed for mass audiences (like Sesame Street), but there will still be barriers to transmission to everybody.
Gladwell devotes considerable space toward discussing nuanced studies of various epidemics, and how his three laws played into them. One example I found particularly interesting told of suicide in the nation of Micronesia: Unheard of before a teenager took his life in the 1960s over a minor disagreement with his parents, a suicide epidemic soon swept the nation. The power of context played a powerful role here: that first suicide gave permission for the rest. Stickiness was important too: suicide, unfortunately, is absolutely sticky, and there is no way to make it less sticky. Try it once, and you are dead. One thing this example lacked, though, was any tie-in to the Few. No Connectors advertised suicide to their many acquaintances, no Mavens told the best methods, and no Salesmen advocated their friends try it. As far as I can tell, the first suicide was reported in the newspapers; the media again was the culprit for tipping this epidemic.
This is indicative of the book as a whole: Gladwell presents a wealth of provocative ideas, a wealth of interesting examples, and a wealth of succinct conclusions. His writing is expertly woven and watertight. His book is chock full of marvelous anecdotes; however, nowhere does he give an example that effectively demonstrates the importance of all of his three laws in causing epidemics to tip. This does not mean his ideas are worthless; rather, he has presented tools that can be used to create change in society, in our thinking patterns, and in the way we spread our messages. If we want to spread things that really matter, such as anti-crime waves and learning, we need to identify ways that will help these things, which are not inherently transmitted, to spread to epidemic proportions. Seen as a historical reckoning of the factors involved in the spread of epidemics, Gladwell's Tipping Point excels. He failed, however, to define a general model that we can use to predict the spread of epidemics
What do syphilis in Baltimore, Sesame Street, Hush Puppies shoes, and crime reduction in New York City all have in common? They are all epidemics. They started with a small group of people, reached some ethereal level and exploded across a community, be it local, national, or worldwide. They are also prominently featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell examines epidemics to explore the reasons why these disparate things have been able to affect so many people. He seems personally most interested in those epidemics that can make a positive difference in people's lives, such as the learning epidemics caused by Sesame Street and Blues Clues. Regardless, he traces the elements involved in the spread of many different epidemics–be they fashion statements, non-crime waves or messages such as Paul Revere's famous cry of impending battle.
Central to the book is the idea of a tipping point: An idea, fashion statement or germ--a contagion--may exist at some basal level within a population, infecting roughly the same number of people that overcome it in any given time period. Some stimulus can cause an imbalance in this equilibrium, though, and the contagion will start to reach more new people than it leaves behind. This is the tipping point, and an epidemic follows. Without that push to disrupt the equilibrium, it may never reach that critical mass, that threshold it needs to cross in order to infect the whole population. Gladwell's analysis of epidemics centers around this idea: How can we identify strategies to "tip" phenomena into epidemics?
The idea of an equilibrium is central to the analyses that engineers (like me) perform, and is central to our way of thinking. Every analysis begins with a system (such as a rope that supports a free hanging weight) and a basis of evaluating that system (such as the system's momentum). Due to conservation laws, in this case the conservation of momentum, which states that momentum cannot be created or destroyed, every bit of momentum that enters the system will either be accumulated, or it will leave the system in some way. Equilibrium occurs when the accumulation term is zero, and then everything that enters the system also leaves the system; an accumulation of momentum results in motion. The rope with the hanging weight is at rest, so it is not accumulating momentum, and it is in equilibrium. (Incidentally, this means that the sum of forces acting on it is zero, and the tension in the rope can be calculated.) The upshot of this is that equilibria can be described mathematically. As soon as Gladwell mentioned the word 'equilibrium', I began to formulate a mathematical model to track the spread of an epidemic throughout a population.
The model works roughly thus: The system is a population of individuals, and the quantity being tracked is the spread of a particular contagion (which is not conserved as momentum is; however, the same analysis can be used to track it). Each member of the population in question would have a state, either "infected" or "not infected." They would also contact "x" number of people in a given time step "t", and, if infected, have a "y"% chance of "infecting" each of the people they came into contact with. Each individual would remain infected for "z" time steps. Each of these variables would be different for each person in the population (except for the time step, which would necessarily be the same for all), and, when all members of the population were considered, the total spread of the contagion could be tracked. You could predict the percent of a population "infected" with some contagion after a time period by setting an initial condition (maybe only one individual is infected to start with) and extrapolating to the desired number of time steps. Just as Gladwell attempts to cut to the heart of the issue, this is the simplest model I could think of to describe the spread of a contagion.
Gladwell defines the transmission of epidemics by three laws. The first of these, "The Law of the Few," explores three special types of people that can help an idea become an epidemic: his “Connectors,” “Salespeople” and "Mavens." These are the people who can tip that contagion over the edge into boundless effect. In my model, these are people who have exceptional coefficients "x", "y", and "z". The first of these, the Connectors, spread contagions exceptionally well simply by the sheer magnitude of people they know. Their "x" is through the roof. If I am studying the spread of the newest pop hit, “Bulletproof” by La Roux, an average person would pass the song along to maybe two people per day. The Connectors would get ten people to listen to it: they know more people, they are in contact with them more, and their contact is meaningful. These people have huge social networks.
What if you don’t like pop? Especially dance pop from the UK, like "Bulletproof"? Gladwell’s Salespeople will convince you that you do. Their "y" is near 100%: they have the ability to transmit ideas to everyone they meet. Gladwell’s Mavens are an interesting case. These people are experts in a narrow field. As a result, they hold a lot of sway when giving advice about that field, and people they "infect" are likely to stick with whatever the Maven is spreading. Given the right contagion--something in their field--they have a high "y," and the "z" of those they infect is likely to rise. Mavens also practice selection among contagions--they will only select the best. The case of the Maven may not apply as well to the spread of a pop hit. Maybe a music reviewer would be a maven, and a favorable review would encourage others to listen.
In this way, these three types of people infect more than their fair share; they diffuse ideas farther than normal people. Whether from sheer numbers as with the Connectors, from careful selection as with the Mavens, or with efficacy of transmission as with the Salespeople, these special individuals have the ability to tip things into epidemics. Gladwell identified them through studying epidemics he was familiar with and by thinking about extraordinary people he knew. I could also have identified them by analysis of my model: They are individuals with exceptional coefficients.
When evaluating any system that is described by a model, it is helpful to explore the ramifications that changing each variable of the model has. This is accomplished by holding all the variables except one constant and then manipulating that one. Alternatively, one variable can be held constant and the others changed to identify the restrictions imposed by that variable on the system. In this way, the effects of each variable, that is, each critical component of the system, can be identified. Just by looking at my simple model, I disagree that the three types of people who are Gladwell's Few would be the only ones who would have the power to transform a contagion into an epidemic–There are other ways to manipulate the "x," "y" and "z" values to produce extraordinary individuals. What about someone with a high "z" who harbors a contagion for a long time–a 'Convert?' These people would be able to upset the equilibrium by transmitting the contagion for a long time–they will be singing “Bulletproof” for weeks rather than just the day or two after they hear it, and they will be able to tip this phenomenon just like the Few can. Although Gladwell did not uncover any such others through his exploration of epidemics, a simple analysis of the model shows that more types of individuals with the power to tip things could exist. If we are interested in the identification of individuals to help us tip our own epidemics, shouldn't we spread the net as far as possible?
What about the media? It turns out that people do not only communicate face to face. The media are an alternate route to the Few for tipping epidemics. Sort of like super-Connectors, the media have a huge audience to whom they can spread information. Indeed, as Gladwell addresses his second criteria, “The Stickiness Factor,” he talks about children's television as a vehicle for learning epidemics, a case in which messages are disseminated entirely by the media, not by the Few. Even if the media are considered as individual Connectors (or as one big mega-Connector), they throw the whole system out of whack due to the huge audience they command, orders of magnitude higher than anything that could be achieved by one of the Few. Why should we even bother looking for these Few if the conglomerate media is the ultimate Connector, and can tip our ideas into epidemics?
The internet is a medium that blurs the distinction between the Few and the general population. Through the proliferation of email, blogs, forums and social networking sites, we are able to communicate with each other much more rapidly and voluminously than nine years ago when Gladwell wrote his book. For my model, this means that everybody's "x" is elevated: we are all pseudo-Connectors. Connectors are no longer critical links in the chain that connects the population. I can message hundreds of people with the click of a mouse on Facebook, and link them to “Bulletproof” on Youtube. This glut of information necessarily devalues it: We as listeners cannot pay attention to it all. Mavens are drowned out by thousands of their peers reviewing the same items on Amazon; however, maybe this connectedness would allow an ultimate Maven to exist. The internet would empower the Maven to reach a huge audience. Maybe the Few can draw on the internet just as others do. Regardless, new forms of communication have changed the roles of the Few.
One very important distinction heretofore not considered is that different individuals will have different reactions to different contagions. A Maven is a perfect example: they will only have 'tipping power' for things they are experts at. From the perspective of my model, this means that considering different contagions requires the calculation of new coefficients for each individual. This presents a huge task, and there may be no way to correctly identify what the coefficients are; indeed this goes beyond tracking the spread of an epidemic, and instead delves into the realm of innovation, discovering new contagions. My model is not a useful tool for finding which things will spread, but rather how they will spread. The contagion up until this point has been an abstraction. To more fully explore the spread of epidemics, Gladwell turns his attention to the message that is being spread.
Gladwell's second law is the "Stickiness Factor," with which he explores the reason that some things are contagions--why do they 'stick' to us? He here focuses not on the population through which the epidemic spreads, or the Few who tip it; he looks at the contents of the contagion. The Few can’t do anything with an impotent virus or a worthless idea. It must be "sticky" enough to be absorbed before it can be passed on.
As his primary examples for this law, Gladwell highlights the television programs Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. He shows them as examples of intentionally engineering the 'stickiness' of a message, in this case increasing the stickiness of learning for children. The creators of Sesame Street studied children and what was sticky with them. They then tailored their show to meet those criteria. The sticky factor came not just from the information, but also the way it was presented, catering to children’s short attention spans. Blue’s Clues took the information and success of Sesame Street to another level by further developing the stickiness of the information, repeating it five times every week. This is a very interesting concept, that presentation can change the stickiness of a message without altering the content.
This stickiness factor is not taken into account in my simple model. It is assumed that the contagion will be sticky, that it can be transmitted, and that it will spread. This is the case for most of the things we typically consider contagions, i.e. diseases. With the example of education, Gladwell shows how non-inherently transmissible things can also become contagions. This has huge implications: We can engineer virtually anything to become an epidemic if we can figure out how to make it sticky. We can spread information, ideas and positive change just like H1N1 has spread across the world, if we only figure out how to make our information stickier.
My model is much too simplistic to describe a real-world epidemic, but so is Gladwell's commentary up to this point. He had been hinting at it, like when he described some indefinable quality that some Salespeople posses, but he truly explores the issue in the third section of the book, "The Power of Context." Here he states the very obvious point that circumstances matter. People and ideas do not exist in vacuums. There is more than just stickiness and personality type at play. We as humans have complex subconscious psychological processes that pick up on subtle environmental cues we may not even be aware of. If the song “Bulletproof” is used as a theoretical example in a class project, the context informs the reader that it is not meant as a serious suggestion. The would-be epidemic tipper needs to consider the context that the message will be transmitted in.
Within a population, up until this point, only the transmitters of epidemics (The Connectors, the Mavens, and the Salespeople) have been considered, but the recipient of the transmission is just as important. Communication is a complicated subject that demands a lot from both the sender and the receiver to be effective. The great managerial writer, Drucker, addressed this in a 1974 essay called "Functioning Communications." He delineates there the effort required by the communicator to reach the listener due to differences in mental processes. Communications can fall upon deaf ears when the communicator fails to take into account the listener's mindset. People hear what they want to hear. People's brains are hard-wired to process stimuli in certain fashions. Drucker writes how communication is almost a battle: As the communicator, you have to bring the listener around to your way of thinking. You have to bypass the natural route in the listener's mind and develop new pathways. Otherwise, they will hear what they want to hear, and not what you want them to hear.
Effective communication from the communicator's standpoint demands messages that speak to the audience. Effective communication from the listener's standpoint demands a receptive attitude and a commitment to the consideration of new ideas. This is a hard thing to accomplish when so much of the information processing that goes on in our brains occurs below our consciousness. It's almost like holding you breath: you can only do it for so long before your natural processes take over. For Gladwell, this is addressed as Context. Some messages can be groomed for mass audiences (like Sesame Street), but there will still be barriers to transmission to everybody.
Gladwell devotes considerable space toward discussing nuanced studies of various epidemics, and how his three laws played into them. One example I found particularly interesting told of suicide in the nation of Micronesia: Unheard of before a teenager took his life in the 1960s over a minor disagreement with his parents, a suicide epidemic soon swept the nation. The power of context played a powerful role here: that first suicide gave permission for the rest. Stickiness was important too: suicide, unfortunately, is absolutely sticky, and there is no way to make it less sticky. Try it once, and you are dead. One thing this example lacked, though, was any tie-in to the Few. No Connectors advertised suicide to their many acquaintances, no Mavens told the best methods, and no Salesmen advocated their friends try it. As far as I can tell, the first suicide was reported in the newspapers; the media again was the culprit for tipping this epidemic.
This is indicative of the book as a whole: Gladwell presents a wealth of provocative ideas, a wealth of interesting examples, and a wealth of succinct conclusions. His writing is expertly woven and watertight. His book is chock full of marvelous anecdotes; however, nowhere does he give an example that effectively demonstrates the importance of all of his three laws in causing epidemics to tip. This does not mean his ideas are worthless; rather, he has presented tools that can be used to create change in society, in our thinking patterns, and in the way we spread our messages. If we want to spread things that really matter, such as anti-crime waves and learning, we need to identify ways that will help these things, which are not inherently transmitted, to spread to epidemic proportions. Seen as a historical reckoning of the factors involved in the spread of epidemics, Gladwell's Tipping Point excels. He failed, however, to define a general model that we can use to predict the spread of epidemics
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Book Review draft 2
What do syphilis in Baltimore, Sesame Street, Hush Puppies shoes, and crime reduction in New York City all have in common? They are all epidemics. They started with a small group of people, reached some ethereal level and exploded across a community, be it local, national, or worldwide. They are also prominently featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell examines epidemics to explore the reasons why these disparate things have been able to affect so many people. He seems personally most interested in those epidemics that can make a positive difference in people's lives, such as the learning epidemics caused by Sesame Street and Blues Clues. Regardless, he traces the elements involved in the spread of many different epidemics–be they fashion statements, non-crime waves or messages such as Paul Revere's famous cry of impending battle.
Central to the book is the idea of a tipping point: An idea, trend, or germ--a contagion--may exist at some basal level within a population, infecting roughly the same number of people that overcome it in any given time period. Some stimulus can cause an imbalance in this equilibrium, though, and the contagion will start to reach more new people than it leaves behind. This is the tipping point, and an epidemic follows. Without that push to disrupt the equilibrium, it may never reach that critical mass, that threshold it needs to cross in order to infect the whole population. Gladwell's analysis of epidemics centers around this idea: How can we identify strategies to "tip" phenomena into epidemics?
Perhaps because of the discussion of this equilibrium, I began to formulate a mathematical model to track the spread of an epidemic to go along with Gladwell's commentary. The model works roughly thus: Each member of the population in question would have a state, either "infected" or "not infected." They would also contact "x" number of people in a given time step "t", and, if infected, have a "y"% chance of "infecting" each of the people they came into contact with. Each individual would remain infected for "z" time steps. Each of these variables would be different for each person in the population (except for the time step, which would necessarily be the same for all), and, when all members of the population were considered, the total spread of the contagion could be tracked. You could predict the percent of a population "infected" with some contagion after a time period by setting an initial condition (maybe only one individual is infected to start with) and extrapolating to the desired number of time steps.
Gladwell defines the transmission of epidemics by three laws. The first of these, "The Law of the Few," explores three special types of people that can help an idea become an epidemic: his “Connectors,” “Salespeople” and "Mavens." These are the people who can tip that contagion over the edge into boundless effect. In my model, these are people who have exceptional coefficients "x", "y", and "z". The first of these, the Connectors, spread contagions exceptionally well simply by the sheer magnitude of people they know. Their "x" is through the roof. If I am studying the spread of the newest pop hit, “Bulletproof” by La Roux, an average person would pass the song along to maybe two people per day. The Connectors would get ten people to listen to it: they know more people, they are in contact with them more, and their contact is meaningful. These people have huge social networks.
What if you don’t like pop? Especially dance pop from the UK, like "Bulletproof"? Gladwell’s Salespeople will convince you that you do. Their "y" is near 100%: they have the ability to transmit ideas to everyone they meet. Gladwell’s Mavens are an interesting case. These people are experts in a narrow field. As a result, they hold a lot of sway when giving advice about that field, and people they "infect" are likely to stick with whatever the Maven is spreading. Given the right contagion--something in their field--they have a high "y," and the "z" of those they infect is likely to rise. Mavens also practice selection among contagions--they will only select the best. The case of the Maven may not apply as well to the spread of a pop hit. Maybe a music reviewer would be a maven, and a favorable review would encourage others to listen.
In this way, these three types of people infect more than their fair share; they diffuse ideas farther than normal people. Whether from sheer numbers as with the Connectors, from careful selection as with the Mavens, or with efficacy of transmission as with the Salespeople, these special individuals have the ability to tip things into epidemics.
Just by looking at my simple model, I disagree that these three types of people would be the only ones who would have the power to transform a contagion into an epidemic–There are other ways to manipulate the "x," "y" and "z" values to produce extraordinary individuals. What about someone with a high "z" who harbors a contagion for a long time–a 'Collector?' These people would be able to upset the equilibrium by transmitting the contagion for a long time–they will be singing “Bulletproof” for weeks rather than just the day or two after they hear it. I also wonder if these Connectors, Salespeople, and Mavens are truly different from the average population, or if there is a broad spectrum of ability. In any case, it is useless to define these people if you can't find them to help tip your epidemic.
The Internet has also caused Gladwell’s heroes, especially the Connectors, to lose some of their power. Social networking sites allow all of us to be Connectors. I can message hundreds of people with the click of a mouse on Facebook, and link them to “Bulletproof” on Youtube. This glut of information devalues the communications of the Connectors. Mavens lose their uniqueness when faced with thousands of their peers reviewing the same items on Amazon. Salespeople are perhaps immune, as good salesmanship requires face-to-face contact.
Additionally, it is short-sighted to say that certain types of people are necessary for an epidemic to transpire. Some exceptional contagions can spread on their own, like H1N1 and results of the presidential race in the USA.
The Few are not even necessary to tip epidemics. The media can take their place. Gladwell even acknowledges that the media can be an alternative vehicle to the “Few” for reaching many people at once. Indeed, as he addresses his second criteria, “The Stickiness Factor,” he talks about children's television as a vehicle for learning epidemics, a case in which messages are disseminated entirely by the media, not by the Few. Gladwell here focuses not on the population through which the epidemic spreads, or the Few who tip it; he looks at the contents of the contagion. The Few can’t do anything with an impotent virus or a worthless idea. It must be "sticky" enough to be absorbed before it can be passed on.
Gladwell highlights Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues as examples of intentionally increasing the 'stickiness' of a message, in this case increasing the stickiness of learning for children. The creators of Sesame Street studied children and what was sticky with them. They then tailored their show to meet those criteria. The sticky factor came not just from the information, but also the way it was presented, catering to children’s short attention spans. Blue’s Clues took the information and success of Sesame Street to another level by further developing the stickiness of the information, repeating it five times every week. This is a very interesting concept, that presentation can change the stickiness of a message without altering the content.
This stickiness factor is not taken into account in my simple model. It is assumed that the contagion will be sticky, that it can be transmitted, and that it will spread. This is the case for most of the things we typically consider contagions, i.e. diseases. With the example of education, Gladwell shows how non-inherently transmissible things can also become contagions. This has huge implications: We can engineer virtually anything to become an epidemic if we can figure out how to make it sticky. We can spread information, ideas and positive change just like H1N1 has spread across the world, if we only figure out how to make our information stickier.
My model is much too simplistic to describe a real-world epidemic, but so is Gladwell's commentary up to this point. He had been hinting at it, like when he described some indefinable quality that some Salespeople posses, but he truly explores the issue in the third section of the book, "The Power of Context." Here he states the very obvious point that circumstances matter. People and ideas do not exist in vacuums. There is more than just stickiness and personality type at play. We as humans have complex subconscious psychological processes that pick up on subtle environmental cues we may not even be aware of. If the song “Bulletproof” is used as a theoretical example in a class project, the context informs the reader that it is not meant as a serious suggestion. The would-be epidemic tipper needs to consider the context that the message will be transmitted in.
Within a population, up until this point, only the transmitters of epidemics (The Connectors, the Mavens, and the Salespeople) have been considered, but the recipient of the transmission is just as important. Communication is a complicated subject that demands a lot from both the sender and the receiver to be effective. The great managerial writer, Drucker, addressed this in a 1974 essay called "Functioning Communications." He delineates there the effort required by the communicator to reach the listener due to differences in mental processes. Communications can fall upon deaf ears when the communicator fails to take into account the listener's mindset. People hear what they want to hear. People's brains are hard-wired to process stimuli in certain fashions. Drucker writes how communication is almost a battle: As the communicator, you have to bring the listener around to your way of thinking. You have to bypass the natural route in the listener's mind and develop new pathways. Otherwise, they will hear what they want to hear, and not what you want them to hear.
Effective communication from the communicator's standpoint demands messages that speak to the audience. Effective communication from the listener's standpoint demands a receptive attitude and a commitment to the consideration of new ideas. This is a hard thing to accomplish when so much of the information processing that goes on in our brains occurs below our consciousness. It's almost like holding you breath: you can only do it for so long before your natural processes take over. For Gladwell, this is addressed as Context. Some messages can be groomed for mass audiences (like Sesame Street), but there will still be barriers to transmission to everybody.
Gladwell devotes considerable space toward discussing nuanced studies of various epidemics, and how his three laws played into them. One example I found particularly interesting told of suicide in the nation of Micronesia: Unheard of before a teenager took his life in the 1960s over a minor disagreement with his parents, a suicide epidemic soon swept the nation. The power of context played a powerful role here: that first suicide gave permission for the rest. Stickiness was important too: suicide, unfortunately, is absolutely sticky, and there is no way to make it less sticky. Try it once, and you are dead. One thing this example lacked, though, was any tie-in to the Few. No Connectors advertised suicide to their many acquaintances, no Mavens told the best methods, and no Salesmen advocated their friends try it. As far as I can tell, the first suicide was reported in the newspapers; the media again was the culprit for tipping this epidemic.
This is indicative of the book as a whole: Gladwell presents a wealth of provocative ideas, a wealth of interesting examples, and a wealth of succinct conclusions. His writing is expertly woven and watertight. His book is chock full of marvelous anecdotes; however, nowhere does he give an example that effectively demonstrates the importance of all of his three laws in causing epidemics to tip. This does not mean his ideas are worthless; rather, he has presented tools that can be used to create change in society, in our thinking patterns, and in the way we spread our messages. If we want to spread things that really matter, such as anti-crime waves and learning, we need to identify ways that will help these things, which are not inherently transmitted, to spread to epidemic proportions.
Central to the book is the idea of a tipping point: An idea, trend, or germ--a contagion--may exist at some basal level within a population, infecting roughly the same number of people that overcome it in any given time period. Some stimulus can cause an imbalance in this equilibrium, though, and the contagion will start to reach more new people than it leaves behind. This is the tipping point, and an epidemic follows. Without that push to disrupt the equilibrium, it may never reach that critical mass, that threshold it needs to cross in order to infect the whole population. Gladwell's analysis of epidemics centers around this idea: How can we identify strategies to "tip" phenomena into epidemics?
Perhaps because of the discussion of this equilibrium, I began to formulate a mathematical model to track the spread of an epidemic to go along with Gladwell's commentary. The model works roughly thus: Each member of the population in question would have a state, either "infected" or "not infected." They would also contact "x" number of people in a given time step "t", and, if infected, have a "y"% chance of "infecting" each of the people they came into contact with. Each individual would remain infected for "z" time steps. Each of these variables would be different for each person in the population (except for the time step, which would necessarily be the same for all), and, when all members of the population were considered, the total spread of the contagion could be tracked. You could predict the percent of a population "infected" with some contagion after a time period by setting an initial condition (maybe only one individual is infected to start with) and extrapolating to the desired number of time steps.
Gladwell defines the transmission of epidemics by three laws. The first of these, "The Law of the Few," explores three special types of people that can help an idea become an epidemic: his “Connectors,” “Salespeople” and "Mavens." These are the people who can tip that contagion over the edge into boundless effect. In my model, these are people who have exceptional coefficients "x", "y", and "z". The first of these, the Connectors, spread contagions exceptionally well simply by the sheer magnitude of people they know. Their "x" is through the roof. If I am studying the spread of the newest pop hit, “Bulletproof” by La Roux, an average person would pass the song along to maybe two people per day. The Connectors would get ten people to listen to it: they know more people, they are in contact with them more, and their contact is meaningful. These people have huge social networks.
What if you don’t like pop? Especially dance pop from the UK, like "Bulletproof"? Gladwell’s Salespeople will convince you that you do. Their "y" is near 100%: they have the ability to transmit ideas to everyone they meet. Gladwell’s Mavens are an interesting case. These people are experts in a narrow field. As a result, they hold a lot of sway when giving advice about that field, and people they "infect" are likely to stick with whatever the Maven is spreading. Given the right contagion--something in their field--they have a high "y," and the "z" of those they infect is likely to rise. Mavens also practice selection among contagions--they will only select the best. The case of the Maven may not apply as well to the spread of a pop hit. Maybe a music reviewer would be a maven, and a favorable review would encourage others to listen.
In this way, these three types of people infect more than their fair share; they diffuse ideas farther than normal people. Whether from sheer numbers as with the Connectors, from careful selection as with the Mavens, or with efficacy of transmission as with the Salespeople, these special individuals have the ability to tip things into epidemics.
Just by looking at my simple model, I disagree that these three types of people would be the only ones who would have the power to transform a contagion into an epidemic–There are other ways to manipulate the "x," "y" and "z" values to produce extraordinary individuals. What about someone with a high "z" who harbors a contagion for a long time–a 'Collector?' These people would be able to upset the equilibrium by transmitting the contagion for a long time–they will be singing “Bulletproof” for weeks rather than just the day or two after they hear it. I also wonder if these Connectors, Salespeople, and Mavens are truly different from the average population, or if there is a broad spectrum of ability. In any case, it is useless to define these people if you can't find them to help tip your epidemic.
The Internet has also caused Gladwell’s heroes, especially the Connectors, to lose some of their power. Social networking sites allow all of us to be Connectors. I can message hundreds of people with the click of a mouse on Facebook, and link them to “Bulletproof” on Youtube. This glut of information devalues the communications of the Connectors. Mavens lose their uniqueness when faced with thousands of their peers reviewing the same items on Amazon. Salespeople are perhaps immune, as good salesmanship requires face-to-face contact.
Additionally, it is short-sighted to say that certain types of people are necessary for an epidemic to transpire. Some exceptional contagions can spread on their own, like H1N1 and results of the presidential race in the USA.
The Few are not even necessary to tip epidemics. The media can take their place. Gladwell even acknowledges that the media can be an alternative vehicle to the “Few” for reaching many people at once. Indeed, as he addresses his second criteria, “The Stickiness Factor,” he talks about children's television as a vehicle for learning epidemics, a case in which messages are disseminated entirely by the media, not by the Few. Gladwell here focuses not on the population through which the epidemic spreads, or the Few who tip it; he looks at the contents of the contagion. The Few can’t do anything with an impotent virus or a worthless idea. It must be "sticky" enough to be absorbed before it can be passed on.
Gladwell highlights Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues as examples of intentionally increasing the 'stickiness' of a message, in this case increasing the stickiness of learning for children. The creators of Sesame Street studied children and what was sticky with them. They then tailored their show to meet those criteria. The sticky factor came not just from the information, but also the way it was presented, catering to children’s short attention spans. Blue’s Clues took the information and success of Sesame Street to another level by further developing the stickiness of the information, repeating it five times every week. This is a very interesting concept, that presentation can change the stickiness of a message without altering the content.
This stickiness factor is not taken into account in my simple model. It is assumed that the contagion will be sticky, that it can be transmitted, and that it will spread. This is the case for most of the things we typically consider contagions, i.e. diseases. With the example of education, Gladwell shows how non-inherently transmissible things can also become contagions. This has huge implications: We can engineer virtually anything to become an epidemic if we can figure out how to make it sticky. We can spread information, ideas and positive change just like H1N1 has spread across the world, if we only figure out how to make our information stickier.
My model is much too simplistic to describe a real-world epidemic, but so is Gladwell's commentary up to this point. He had been hinting at it, like when he described some indefinable quality that some Salespeople posses, but he truly explores the issue in the third section of the book, "The Power of Context." Here he states the very obvious point that circumstances matter. People and ideas do not exist in vacuums. There is more than just stickiness and personality type at play. We as humans have complex subconscious psychological processes that pick up on subtle environmental cues we may not even be aware of. If the song “Bulletproof” is used as a theoretical example in a class project, the context informs the reader that it is not meant as a serious suggestion. The would-be epidemic tipper needs to consider the context that the message will be transmitted in.
Within a population, up until this point, only the transmitters of epidemics (The Connectors, the Mavens, and the Salespeople) have been considered, but the recipient of the transmission is just as important. Communication is a complicated subject that demands a lot from both the sender and the receiver to be effective. The great managerial writer, Drucker, addressed this in a 1974 essay called "Functioning Communications." He delineates there the effort required by the communicator to reach the listener due to differences in mental processes. Communications can fall upon deaf ears when the communicator fails to take into account the listener's mindset. People hear what they want to hear. People's brains are hard-wired to process stimuli in certain fashions. Drucker writes how communication is almost a battle: As the communicator, you have to bring the listener around to your way of thinking. You have to bypass the natural route in the listener's mind and develop new pathways. Otherwise, they will hear what they want to hear, and not what you want them to hear.
Effective communication from the communicator's standpoint demands messages that speak to the audience. Effective communication from the listener's standpoint demands a receptive attitude and a commitment to the consideration of new ideas. This is a hard thing to accomplish when so much of the information processing that goes on in our brains occurs below our consciousness. It's almost like holding you breath: you can only do it for so long before your natural processes take over. For Gladwell, this is addressed as Context. Some messages can be groomed for mass audiences (like Sesame Street), but there will still be barriers to transmission to everybody.
Gladwell devotes considerable space toward discussing nuanced studies of various epidemics, and how his three laws played into them. One example I found particularly interesting told of suicide in the nation of Micronesia: Unheard of before a teenager took his life in the 1960s over a minor disagreement with his parents, a suicide epidemic soon swept the nation. The power of context played a powerful role here: that first suicide gave permission for the rest. Stickiness was important too: suicide, unfortunately, is absolutely sticky, and there is no way to make it less sticky. Try it once, and you are dead. One thing this example lacked, though, was any tie-in to the Few. No Connectors advertised suicide to their many acquaintances, no Mavens told the best methods, and no Salesmen advocated their friends try it. As far as I can tell, the first suicide was reported in the newspapers; the media again was the culprit for tipping this epidemic.
This is indicative of the book as a whole: Gladwell presents a wealth of provocative ideas, a wealth of interesting examples, and a wealth of succinct conclusions. His writing is expertly woven and watertight. His book is chock full of marvelous anecdotes; however, nowhere does he give an example that effectively demonstrates the importance of all of his three laws in causing epidemics to tip. This does not mean his ideas are worthless; rather, he has presented tools that can be used to create change in society, in our thinking patterns, and in the way we spread our messages. If we want to spread things that really matter, such as anti-crime waves and learning, we need to identify ways that will help these things, which are not inherently transmitted, to spread to epidemic proportions.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The biological/psychological (non)dichotomy
You cannot separate mind from body. We frequently do in everyday conversation and in the way we approach ourselves, but, at a fundamental level, our biological and psychological selves are the same. Even if you consider the body and mind separate entities, you have to acknowledge that they are entirely dependent upon each other: a body without a mind will not move, will not eat, will not care for itself, will die. A mind without a body cannot see, hear, feel, taste, or smell; it cannot sense anything; it cannot communicate; it cannot be.
This notion of symbiosis, that the physical and mental rely on one another in an intimate fashion, does not go far enough, though. Our physical and mental selves are linked even more fundamentally than this. Your mind is not housed in your body; rather, it is an extension of your physiology:
You have a brain. You have a physical organ made of millions and millions of neurons, connected in wonderfully complicated ways, conducting action potentials along their lengths, transmitting signals to one another through chemical molecules called neurotransmitters. You have a biological network of neural cells encased in your cranium. Everything that you think, everything that you sense, and everything that you do is dependent on that incredibly complex collection of neurons, your brain. All your thoughts and thought processes depend on the transmission of electrical signals through that tissue. Your sense organs (ears, eyes, skin, etc.) detect stimuli and transmit electrical signals to specific areas of your brain. These signals are processed in incredibly intricate ways, spinning paths through your neural network. Your actions depend on the signals reaching the motor center of your brain, causing you to move your limbs, form words with your lips and throat, and place your hands on the keyboard and type.
Raise your hand.
Okay, you can put it down.
How were you able to get your hand get up in the air? You might say, "The same way I move any other part of myself. I am in control. I think, and I move." The process is more biological than that, though. Initially, you received a visual stimulus from the computer screen, which interfaced with the photoreceptors of your eye, transmitting a signal along your optic nerve to the occipital lobe of your brain. Some processing center in your brain identified the signal as words, which were decoded into meaning by another area of neurons. The meaning was transmitted to your motor centers, which sent a signal to the muscles in your arm and shoulder, and your raised your hand. Unless you didn't. If you didn't raise your hand, it is because another pathway intervened. Maybe you are in a public place and didn't want to look foolish. Maybe you aren't engaged and are just skimming this post. Maybe you don't normally acquiesce to odd written requests. In any case, the signal encountered a group of neurons that did not send it on to your motor cortex. It took a path through your neural network that did not involve movement.
Another important point is that you may or may not have been conscious of your decision to raise your hand. Our brains operate and process stimuli much more thoroughly and deeply than we are aware of. (Many debatably reputable sources will give you ways to harness this unused power--just google 'subconscious.') The point is, your brain is like a biological supercomputer, making innumerable connections and subtle distinctions through complex neural interactions, upon which your conscious mind is entirely dependent.
Raise your hand.
Did you do it that time? It was the same visual stimulus. If you had different responses to the commands, it means that the stimulus activated different pathways each time.
Highly trafficked pathways correspond to familiar thoughts or important subconscious processes (like facial recognition and decoding of written words). New stimuli require the development of unused pathways. Making connections between ideas literally involves making connections between neurons in your brain. That's also why we 'fall into an old way of thinking' of 'get stuck in a rut'; we are playing out the same mental pathways that are present in our brains.
Drucker wrote about this in 1974 in "Functioning Communications." He delineates the effort required by the communicator to reach the listener due to differences in mental processes. Communications can fall upon deaf ears when the communicator fails to take into account the listener's mindset. People hear what they want to hear. People's brains are hard-wired to process stimuli in certain fashions. Drucker writes how communication is almost a battle: As the communicator, you have to bring the listener around to your way of thinking. You have to bypass the natural route in the listener's mind and develop new pathways. Otherwise, they will hear what they want to hear, and not what you want them to hear.
Effective communication from the communicator's standpoint demands messages that speak to the audience. Effective communication from the listener's standpoint demands a receptive attitude and a commitment to the consideration of new ideas. This is a hard thing to accomplish when so much of the information processing that goes on in our brains occurs below our consciousness. It's almost like holding you breath: you can only do it for so long before your natural processes take over.
I recently have been tangling with this issue regarding the interpretation of Gladwell's The Tipping Point. In my mind, Gladwell writes about the population dynamics that allow epidemics to spread. He frames his argument using the spread of syphilis in Baltimore. He explains the concept of the tipping point using a model of a disease. He then generalizes to all sorts of epidemics like fashion trends and waves of violence. The first time I read the book, I viewed it as a study in transmission. Gladwell did everything short of writing a mathematical model with variables like the number of individuals within a population contacted and the probability of spreading the contagion to explain the spread of epidemics. The second time I read the book, I saw the same thing. The specifics of what I have been calling the contagion do not matter--if it can be transmitted, Gladwell is talking about it. It doesn't matter whether it infects through a hostile takeover of the host's cells or by forging new pathways in the recipient's brain to develop a new way of thinking or a new desire for a product. The ultimate goal of the book, only partially achieved, was to elucidate the path that every contagion must take to become an epidemic.
Someone else who read this book saw exactly the opposite. Gladwell's use of syphilis was only a useful starting point toward getting his audience to think about headier, more abstract issues. The point of the book was not to study transmission in general, but to study the diffusion of innovation, of new ideas, and of positive changes in the world. The specifics of a model do not matter. What matters is the elucidation of tools that can be used to create change in society, in our thinking patterns, and in the way we spread our messages. The distinction between biological epidemics and those that really matter is huge: everyone knows that disease spreads; that is disease's basic function; who cares. If we want to spread things that really matter, such as anti-crime waves and learning, we need to identify ways that will help these things, which are not inherently transmitted, to spread to epidemic proportions.
As I stated, I am having a hard time making that distinction. The preceding paragraph sounds like a load of bunk to me. Due to the eccentricities of my own mental pathways, the transmission aspect of the book is most important to me. If a model can be developed that describes transmission throughout a population, that model should yield generalizable conclusions that can be applied to the spread of anything. The mechanism of actually infecting each individual is irrelevant. It is taken for granted. There may be some indication of 'transmissibility' (e.g. only 5% of contacted individuals will be infected), but the actual underlying reason that this phenomenon spreads does not matter.
I think that I am being asked to view Gladwell' Tipping Point from a different vantage point. Rather than focusing on some model, I should be focusing on _________. I'm still not sure. It's nice to talk about the spread of various positive ideas or halting the progress of negative epidemics, but without something generalizable to take away, I am just left with a bunch of anecdotes. I am trying to be receptive to a new interpretation of the book, but I cannot escape the thought processes of my brain that lead me back to the same conclusion every time I try to consider it from a different angle: We can create a model of the spread of a contagion throughout a population of dissimilar individuals; this model will allow us to engineer our own epidemics.
Our "minds" are products of our biology. If we are cognizant of the fact that our thought processes are biological processes, we can try to overcome the limitations imposed by following these same neural pathways over and over again.
Do you find this trivial? Do you think to yourself, "Who cares where our thoughts arise from. There is a distinction between my mind and body. I acknowledge that keeping an open mind is important for communication, but it doesn't matter what underlying physiological phenomena are responsible for this."
I have tried to present my thoughts in an accessible fashion. I hope that I have been able to pioneer an undiscovered path in your brain. I urge you to realize the limits imposed on your mind by your body, and try to overcome them.
This notion of symbiosis, that the physical and mental rely on one another in an intimate fashion, does not go far enough, though. Our physical and mental selves are linked even more fundamentally than this. Your mind is not housed in your body; rather, it is an extension of your physiology:
You have a brain. You have a physical organ made of millions and millions of neurons, connected in wonderfully complicated ways, conducting action potentials along their lengths, transmitting signals to one another through chemical molecules called neurotransmitters. You have a biological network of neural cells encased in your cranium. Everything that you think, everything that you sense, and everything that you do is dependent on that incredibly complex collection of neurons, your brain. All your thoughts and thought processes depend on the transmission of electrical signals through that tissue. Your sense organs (ears, eyes, skin, etc.) detect stimuli and transmit electrical signals to specific areas of your brain. These signals are processed in incredibly intricate ways, spinning paths through your neural network. Your actions depend on the signals reaching the motor center of your brain, causing you to move your limbs, form words with your lips and throat, and place your hands on the keyboard and type.
Raise your hand.
Okay, you can put it down.
How were you able to get your hand get up in the air? You might say, "The same way I move any other part of myself. I am in control. I think, and I move." The process is more biological than that, though. Initially, you received a visual stimulus from the computer screen, which interfaced with the photoreceptors of your eye, transmitting a signal along your optic nerve to the occipital lobe of your brain. Some processing center in your brain identified the signal as words, which were decoded into meaning by another area of neurons. The meaning was transmitted to your motor centers, which sent a signal to the muscles in your arm and shoulder, and your raised your hand. Unless you didn't. If you didn't raise your hand, it is because another pathway intervened. Maybe you are in a public place and didn't want to look foolish. Maybe you aren't engaged and are just skimming this post. Maybe you don't normally acquiesce to odd written requests. In any case, the signal encountered a group of neurons that did not send it on to your motor cortex. It took a path through your neural network that did not involve movement.
Another important point is that you may or may not have been conscious of your decision to raise your hand. Our brains operate and process stimuli much more thoroughly and deeply than we are aware of. (Many debatably reputable sources will give you ways to harness this unused power--just google 'subconscious.') The point is, your brain is like a biological supercomputer, making innumerable connections and subtle distinctions through complex neural interactions, upon which your conscious mind is entirely dependent.
Raise your hand.
Did you do it that time? It was the same visual stimulus. If you had different responses to the commands, it means that the stimulus activated different pathways each time.
Highly trafficked pathways correspond to familiar thoughts or important subconscious processes (like facial recognition and decoding of written words). New stimuli require the development of unused pathways. Making connections between ideas literally involves making connections between neurons in your brain. That's also why we 'fall into an old way of thinking' of 'get stuck in a rut'; we are playing out the same mental pathways that are present in our brains.
Drucker wrote about this in 1974 in "Functioning Communications." He delineates the effort required by the communicator to reach the listener due to differences in mental processes. Communications can fall upon deaf ears when the communicator fails to take into account the listener's mindset. People hear what they want to hear. People's brains are hard-wired to process stimuli in certain fashions. Drucker writes how communication is almost a battle: As the communicator, you have to bring the listener around to your way of thinking. You have to bypass the natural route in the listener's mind and develop new pathways. Otherwise, they will hear what they want to hear, and not what you want them to hear.
Effective communication from the communicator's standpoint demands messages that speak to the audience. Effective communication from the listener's standpoint demands a receptive attitude and a commitment to the consideration of new ideas. This is a hard thing to accomplish when so much of the information processing that goes on in our brains occurs below our consciousness. It's almost like holding you breath: you can only do it for so long before your natural processes take over.
I recently have been tangling with this issue regarding the interpretation of Gladwell's The Tipping Point. In my mind, Gladwell writes about the population dynamics that allow epidemics to spread. He frames his argument using the spread of syphilis in Baltimore. He explains the concept of the tipping point using a model of a disease. He then generalizes to all sorts of epidemics like fashion trends and waves of violence. The first time I read the book, I viewed it as a study in transmission. Gladwell did everything short of writing a mathematical model with variables like the number of individuals within a population contacted and the probability of spreading the contagion to explain the spread of epidemics. The second time I read the book, I saw the same thing. The specifics of what I have been calling the contagion do not matter--if it can be transmitted, Gladwell is talking about it. It doesn't matter whether it infects through a hostile takeover of the host's cells or by forging new pathways in the recipient's brain to develop a new way of thinking or a new desire for a product. The ultimate goal of the book, only partially achieved, was to elucidate the path that every contagion must take to become an epidemic.
Someone else who read this book saw exactly the opposite. Gladwell's use of syphilis was only a useful starting point toward getting his audience to think about headier, more abstract issues. The point of the book was not to study transmission in general, but to study the diffusion of innovation, of new ideas, and of positive changes in the world. The specifics of a model do not matter. What matters is the elucidation of tools that can be used to create change in society, in our thinking patterns, and in the way we spread our messages. The distinction between biological epidemics and those that really matter is huge: everyone knows that disease spreads; that is disease's basic function; who cares. If we want to spread things that really matter, such as anti-crime waves and learning, we need to identify ways that will help these things, which are not inherently transmitted, to spread to epidemic proportions.
As I stated, I am having a hard time making that distinction. The preceding paragraph sounds like a load of bunk to me. Due to the eccentricities of my own mental pathways, the transmission aspect of the book is most important to me. If a model can be developed that describes transmission throughout a population, that model should yield generalizable conclusions that can be applied to the spread of anything. The mechanism of actually infecting each individual is irrelevant. It is taken for granted. There may be some indication of 'transmissibility' (e.g. only 5% of contacted individuals will be infected), but the actual underlying reason that this phenomenon spreads does not matter.
I think that I am being asked to view Gladwell' Tipping Point from a different vantage point. Rather than focusing on some model, I should be focusing on _________. I'm still not sure. It's nice to talk about the spread of various positive ideas or halting the progress of negative epidemics, but without something generalizable to take away, I am just left with a bunch of anecdotes. I am trying to be receptive to a new interpretation of the book, but I cannot escape the thought processes of my brain that lead me back to the same conclusion every time I try to consider it from a different angle: We can create a model of the spread of a contagion throughout a population of dissimilar individuals; this model will allow us to engineer our own epidemics.
Our "minds" are products of our biology. If we are cognizant of the fact that our thought processes are biological processes, we can try to overcome the limitations imposed by following these same neural pathways over and over again.
Do you find this trivial? Do you think to yourself, "Who cares where our thoughts arise from. There is a distinction between my mind and body. I acknowledge that keeping an open mind is important for communication, but it doesn't matter what underlying physiological phenomena are responsible for this."
I have tried to present my thoughts in an accessible fashion. I hope that I have been able to pioneer an undiscovered path in your brain. I urge you to realize the limits imposed on your mind by your body, and try to overcome them.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
A review of Gladwell's The Tipping Point
What do syphilis in Baltimore, Sesame Street, Hush Puppies shoes, and crime reduction in New York City all have in common? They are all epidemics. They started with a small group of people, reached some ethereal level and exploded across a community, be it local, national, or worldwide. They are also prominently featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell attempts to trace the elements involved in the spread of such epidemics–be they diseases, fashion statements, or messages such as Paul Revere's famous cry of impending battle. Gladwell wastes not time in defining the problem with three variables:
1) The people among whom the epidemic spreads, or "The Law of the Few"
2) The content of the epidemic (contagious disease, commercial message, etc.), or "The Stickiness Factor"
3) Environmental factors influencing the epidemic's spread, or "The Power of Context"
With these laws, Gladwell presents a framework in which all epidemics–both biological and social–can be analyzed and controlled.
Central to the book is the idea of a tipping point: A contagion may exist at some basal level within a population, infecting roughly the same number of people that overcome it in any given time period. Some stimulus can cause an imbalance in this equilibrium, though, and the contagion will start to reach more new people than it leaves behind. This is the tipping point, and an epidemic follows. Without that push to disrupt the equilibrium, it may never reach that critical mass, that threshold it needs to cross in order to infect the whole population. With his “Law of the Few,” Gladwell explores three special types of people that can help an idea become an epidemic: his “Connectors,” “Mavens” and “Salespeople.” These are the people who can tip that contagion over the edge into boundless effect.
Gladwell’s Connectors spread contagions simply by contacting lots of people. Let’s say I, a normal person, spread this contagion (how about the newest pop hit, “Bulletproof” by La Roux) to one person today. A Connector will get ten people to listen to it: he knows more people than I do, he is in contact with them more, and his contact is meaningful.
Gladwell’s Mavens spread contagions by fostering the most contagious strains. They would not spread “Bulletproof.” They would research the topic and pick a better song, one with a better beat, more artistic merit, and the best societal implications.
What if you don’t like pop? Especially dance pop from the UK? Gladwell’s Salespeople will convince you that you do. In this way, these three types of people infect more than their fair share; they diffuse ideas farther than normal people. Whether from sheer numbers as with the Connectors, from careful selection as with the Mavens, or with efficacy of transmission as with the Salespeople, these special individuals have the ability to tip things into epidemics.
I disagree that these three types of people would be the only ones who would have the power to transform a contagion into an epidemic–what about someone who harbors a contagion for a long time–a 'Collector?' These people would be able to upset the equilibrium by transmitting the contagion for a long time–they will be singing “Bulletproof” for weeks rather than just the day or two after they hear it. Additionally, it is short-sighted to say that certain types of people are necessary for an epidemic to transpire. Some exceptional contagions can spread on their own, like H1N1 and results of the presidential race in the USA.
The Internet has also caused Gladwell’s heroes, especially the Connectors, to lose some of their power. Social networking sites allow all of us to be Connectors. I can message hundreds of people with the click of a mouse on Facebook, and link them to “Bulletproof” on Youtube. This glut of information devalues the communications of the Connectors. Mavens lose their uniqueness when faced with thousands of their peers reviewing the same items on Amazon. Salespeople are perhaps immune, as good salesmanship requires face-to-face contact.
Gladwell acknowledges the media as an alternative vehicle to the “Few” for reaching many people at once. Indeed, as he addresses his second criteria, “The Stickiness Factor,” he talks about children's television as a vehicle for learning epidemics, both messages disseminated entirely by the media. Gladwell here focuses not on the population through which the epidemic spreads, or the Few who tip it; he looks at the contents of the contagion. The Few can’t do anything with an impotent virus or a worthless idea. It must be "sticky" enough to be absorbed before it can be passed on.
Gladwell highlights Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues as examples of intentionally increasing the 'stickiness' of a message, in this case increasing the stickiness of learning for children. The creators of Sesame Street studied children and what was sticky with them. They then tailored their show to meet those criteria. The sticky factor came not just from the information, but also the way it was presented, catering to children’s short attention spans. Blue’s Clues took the information and success of Sesame Street to another level by further developing the stickiness of the information, repeating it five times every week. This is a very interesting concept, that presentation can change the stickiness of a message without altering the content.
In the third section of the book, "The Power of Context", Gladwell states the very obvious point that circumstances matter. People and ideas do not exist in vacuums. There is more than just stickiness and personality type at play. Humans also have complex subconscious psychological processes that pick up on subtle environmental cues we may not even be aware of. Gladwell almost undermines some of his earlier conclusions by emphasizing the importance of context. More, though, it serves as another variable that must be taken into account. If the song “Bulletproof” is used as a theoretical example in a class project, the context informs the reader that it is not meant as a serious suggestion. The would-be epidemic tipper needs to consider the context that the message will be transmitted in.
Gladwell devotes considerable space toward discussing nuanced studies of various epidemics, and how his three laws played into them. One example I found particularly interesting told of suicide in the nation of Micronesia: Unheard of before a teenager took his life in the 1960s over a minor disagreement with his parents, a suicide epidemic soon swept the nation. The power of context played a powerful role here: that first suicide gave permission for the rest. One thing this example lacked, though, was any tie-in to the Few. No Connectors advertised suicide to their many acquaintances, no Mavens told the best methods, and no Salesmen advocated their friends try it.
This is indicative of the book as a whole: Gladwell presents a wealth of provocative ideas, a wealth of interesting examples, and a wealth of succinct conclusions. His writing is expertly woven and watertight. His book is chock full of marvelous anecdotes; however, nowhere does he give an example that effectively demonstrates the importance of his three laws in causing epidemics to tip.
1) The people among whom the epidemic spreads, or "The Law of the Few"
2) The content of the epidemic (contagious disease, commercial message, etc.), or "The Stickiness Factor"
3) Environmental factors influencing the epidemic's spread, or "The Power of Context"
With these laws, Gladwell presents a framework in which all epidemics–both biological and social–can be analyzed and controlled.
Central to the book is the idea of a tipping point: A contagion may exist at some basal level within a population, infecting roughly the same number of people that overcome it in any given time period. Some stimulus can cause an imbalance in this equilibrium, though, and the contagion will start to reach more new people than it leaves behind. This is the tipping point, and an epidemic follows. Without that push to disrupt the equilibrium, it may never reach that critical mass, that threshold it needs to cross in order to infect the whole population. With his “Law of the Few,” Gladwell explores three special types of people that can help an idea become an epidemic: his “Connectors,” “Mavens” and “Salespeople.” These are the people who can tip that contagion over the edge into boundless effect.
Gladwell’s Connectors spread contagions simply by contacting lots of people. Let’s say I, a normal person, spread this contagion (how about the newest pop hit, “Bulletproof” by La Roux) to one person today. A Connector will get ten people to listen to it: he knows more people than I do, he is in contact with them more, and his contact is meaningful.
Gladwell’s Mavens spread contagions by fostering the most contagious strains. They would not spread “Bulletproof.” They would research the topic and pick a better song, one with a better beat, more artistic merit, and the best societal implications.
What if you don’t like pop? Especially dance pop from the UK? Gladwell’s Salespeople will convince you that you do. In this way, these three types of people infect more than their fair share; they diffuse ideas farther than normal people. Whether from sheer numbers as with the Connectors, from careful selection as with the Mavens, or with efficacy of transmission as with the Salespeople, these special individuals have the ability to tip things into epidemics.
I disagree that these three types of people would be the only ones who would have the power to transform a contagion into an epidemic–what about someone who harbors a contagion for a long time–a 'Collector?' These people would be able to upset the equilibrium by transmitting the contagion for a long time–they will be singing “Bulletproof” for weeks rather than just the day or two after they hear it. Additionally, it is short-sighted to say that certain types of people are necessary for an epidemic to transpire. Some exceptional contagions can spread on their own, like H1N1 and results of the presidential race in the USA.
The Internet has also caused Gladwell’s heroes, especially the Connectors, to lose some of their power. Social networking sites allow all of us to be Connectors. I can message hundreds of people with the click of a mouse on Facebook, and link them to “Bulletproof” on Youtube. This glut of information devalues the communications of the Connectors. Mavens lose their uniqueness when faced with thousands of their peers reviewing the same items on Amazon. Salespeople are perhaps immune, as good salesmanship requires face-to-face contact.
Gladwell acknowledges the media as an alternative vehicle to the “Few” for reaching many people at once. Indeed, as he addresses his second criteria, “The Stickiness Factor,” he talks about children's television as a vehicle for learning epidemics, both messages disseminated entirely by the media. Gladwell here focuses not on the population through which the epidemic spreads, or the Few who tip it; he looks at the contents of the contagion. The Few can’t do anything with an impotent virus or a worthless idea. It must be "sticky" enough to be absorbed before it can be passed on.
Gladwell highlights Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues as examples of intentionally increasing the 'stickiness' of a message, in this case increasing the stickiness of learning for children. The creators of Sesame Street studied children and what was sticky with them. They then tailored their show to meet those criteria. The sticky factor came not just from the information, but also the way it was presented, catering to children’s short attention spans. Blue’s Clues took the information and success of Sesame Street to another level by further developing the stickiness of the information, repeating it five times every week. This is a very interesting concept, that presentation can change the stickiness of a message without altering the content.
In the third section of the book, "The Power of Context", Gladwell states the very obvious point that circumstances matter. People and ideas do not exist in vacuums. There is more than just stickiness and personality type at play. Humans also have complex subconscious psychological processes that pick up on subtle environmental cues we may not even be aware of. Gladwell almost undermines some of his earlier conclusions by emphasizing the importance of context. More, though, it serves as another variable that must be taken into account. If the song “Bulletproof” is used as a theoretical example in a class project, the context informs the reader that it is not meant as a serious suggestion. The would-be epidemic tipper needs to consider the context that the message will be transmitted in.
Gladwell devotes considerable space toward discussing nuanced studies of various epidemics, and how his three laws played into them. One example I found particularly interesting told of suicide in the nation of Micronesia: Unheard of before a teenager took his life in the 1960s over a minor disagreement with his parents, a suicide epidemic soon swept the nation. The power of context played a powerful role here: that first suicide gave permission for the rest. One thing this example lacked, though, was any tie-in to the Few. No Connectors advertised suicide to their many acquaintances, no Mavens told the best methods, and no Salesmen advocated their friends try it.
This is indicative of the book as a whole: Gladwell presents a wealth of provocative ideas, a wealth of interesting examples, and a wealth of succinct conclusions. His writing is expertly woven and watertight. His book is chock full of marvelous anecdotes; however, nowhere does he give an example that effectively demonstrates the importance of his three laws in causing epidemics to tip.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Reflection 6
"Alignment"
Are the oars pulling together? Drucker writes about the concept of alignment: even if we are all working towards the same goal, our work must align to maximize the benefit. We can all be pulling our oars to the best of our ability, but unless we all pull at the same time, we will not go anywhere. Our oars will get tangled, our ship will slow, and our progress will stagnate. On the other hand, pulling together will propel us forward.
[a note: This post assumes that the workers are always acting towards the goals of whatever organization they are part of.]
One place where alignment is salient to both the "workers" and the "manager" is the concert band or orchestra. All individual musicians (the "workers") play their parts as well as they can, but to achieve a cohesive sound, they must follow the directions of the director (the "manager"). No matter how expressively and musically each individual plays his part, each musician must adapt to the style the director wants in order for the group to work. The musicians' efforts must align.
The musicians know this, and they acquiesce to the director's vision rather than trying to assert their own interpretations of the music. The director knows this, and he tries to state his vision clearly so the musicians can follow it. He beats the tempo clearly with his baton. He asks for some musicians to bring out certain passages or explains that their role during as section is to support the melody, so they should play softer. He may ask the group to play more lyrically, or martially, or lightly and playfully. He makes judgment calls about the composer's intentions and steers the group toward making beautiful music. It's not enough for a musician to play beautifully: all must play beautifully together.
Alignment works in this setting because there the manager has constant contact with the workers, and the workers have constant contact with one another. They can all see (or rather hear) their efforts and whether they are aligning. They strive for a balanced, blended sound that can only be achieved when their playing aligns. The musicians constantly expect and receive input from the director (and one another) that helps them achieve this goal.
My aunt works in higher education management, and she says she deals with the issue of alignment every day, albeit on a different scale. Elementary school, secondary school, and higher education: All have students' education as their primary goal; however, the ways they achieve this may not align. This is especially prevalent among forms of higher education: credits may not transfer, what is required in University B may be impossible to find at College A, etc. Even though students' education is vitally important to educational institutions, a student who needs to switch between them may be burdened with repeat courses, or set back an entire year.
One essential difference in this case is the apparent lack of a manager. Although people such as my aunt try to get these institutions to standardize or recognize one another's credit systems (that is, align), there is no true "boss" present. The push to align has to come from the same level of the hierarchy, from within the institutions themselves. I think this points to one thing a manager should attempt to do to foster alignment: foster an awareness of the need for alignment in the workers.
On the other hand, alignment perhaps should not be stated overtly as a goal. Rather, the desired result of the alignment should be the stated goal that managers share with workers(e.g. to play music as a group, or to allow students to easily transfer between institutions). Open communication and motivation towards teamwork should encourage alignment naturally.
If alignment is stated as a goal, it begins to sound a little Dilbert to me: 'We will synergistically leverage our core competences to align paradigms while growing our key market values.' It's sort of like saying that the purpose of a business is to make profit: it doesn't really say anything about what the purpose of the business is. [Incidentally, the concept of alignment is related to one of my favorite business buzzwords, synergy, which occurs when the output of two workers (or processes or whatever) is more than the sum of their individual inputs.]
The engineer in me wants to talk about sinusoids [sine waves]: For a given frequency, in-phase sinusoids will add, slightly out-of-phase sinusoids will add to less, and completely out-of-phase sinusoids will cancel entirely. Sinusoids operating at the same frequency can cancel if they are out of phase; if they align, they add constructively.
The kid in me wants to talk about the Planeteers, who combined their powers of Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, and Heart to form Captain Planet.
The pessimist in me wants to return to the rowing analogy: When we pull together, we go places, but we're all still slaves on a Roman Galley.
Are the oars pulling together? Drucker writes about the concept of alignment: even if we are all working towards the same goal, our work must align to maximize the benefit. We can all be pulling our oars to the best of our ability, but unless we all pull at the same time, we will not go anywhere. Our oars will get tangled, our ship will slow, and our progress will stagnate. On the other hand, pulling together will propel us forward.
[a note: This post assumes that the workers are always acting towards the goals of whatever organization they are part of.]
One place where alignment is salient to both the "workers" and the "manager" is the concert band or orchestra. All individual musicians (the "workers") play their parts as well as they can, but to achieve a cohesive sound, they must follow the directions of the director (the "manager"). No matter how expressively and musically each individual plays his part, each musician must adapt to the style the director wants in order for the group to work. The musicians' efforts must align.
The musicians know this, and they acquiesce to the director's vision rather than trying to assert their own interpretations of the music. The director knows this, and he tries to state his vision clearly so the musicians can follow it. He beats the tempo clearly with his baton. He asks for some musicians to bring out certain passages or explains that their role during as section is to support the melody, so they should play softer. He may ask the group to play more lyrically, or martially, or lightly and playfully. He makes judgment calls about the composer's intentions and steers the group toward making beautiful music. It's not enough for a musician to play beautifully: all must play beautifully together.
Alignment works in this setting because there the manager has constant contact with the workers, and the workers have constant contact with one another. They can all see (or rather hear) their efforts and whether they are aligning. They strive for a balanced, blended sound that can only be achieved when their playing aligns. The musicians constantly expect and receive input from the director (and one another) that helps them achieve this goal.
My aunt works in higher education management, and she says she deals with the issue of alignment every day, albeit on a different scale. Elementary school, secondary school, and higher education: All have students' education as their primary goal; however, the ways they achieve this may not align. This is especially prevalent among forms of higher education: credits may not transfer, what is required in University B may be impossible to find at College A, etc. Even though students' education is vitally important to educational institutions, a student who needs to switch between them may be burdened with repeat courses, or set back an entire year.
One essential difference in this case is the apparent lack of a manager. Although people such as my aunt try to get these institutions to standardize or recognize one another's credit systems (that is, align), there is no true "boss" present. The push to align has to come from the same level of the hierarchy, from within the institutions themselves. I think this points to one thing a manager should attempt to do to foster alignment: foster an awareness of the need for alignment in the workers.
On the other hand, alignment perhaps should not be stated overtly as a goal. Rather, the desired result of the alignment should be the stated goal that managers share with workers(e.g. to play music as a group, or to allow students to easily transfer between institutions). Open communication and motivation towards teamwork should encourage alignment naturally.
If alignment is stated as a goal, it begins to sound a little Dilbert to me: 'We will synergistically leverage our core competences to align paradigms while growing our key market values.' It's sort of like saying that the purpose of a business is to make profit: it doesn't really say anything about what the purpose of the business is. [Incidentally, the concept of alignment is related to one of my favorite business buzzwords, synergy, which occurs when the output of two workers (or processes or whatever) is more than the sum of their individual inputs.]
The engineer in me wants to talk about sinusoids [sine waves]: For a given frequency, in-phase sinusoids will add, slightly out-of-phase sinusoids will add to less, and completely out-of-phase sinusoids will cancel entirely. Sinusoids operating at the same frequency can cancel if they are out of phase; if they align, they add constructively.
The kid in me wants to talk about the Planeteers, who combined their powers of Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, and Heart to form Captain Planet.
The pessimist in me wants to return to the rowing analogy: When we pull together, we go places, but we're all still slaves on a Roman Galley.
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