I posted this book summary some weeks ago (see Gladwell).  Here's my podcast summary.

Download What the dog saw by Malcolm Gladwell

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Little things can make a big difference
• Explains and defines the "tipping point" – the moment at which ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire
• Just as one sick person can start an epidemic, very minor adjustments to products or ideas can make them far more likely to be a success
• The overall message of the book is that, contrary to the belief that big results require big efforts that are beyond the capacity of the single individual, one imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It is optimistic in outlook and suggests that individuals can make a significant contribution. It cites the example of Paul Revere who, in 1775, overheard a conversation and rode all night to warn Americans in Boston that the British would attack in the morning. The Americans were ready and defeated them
• The three areas (below) are a good working template for all communications:

1. The Law of the Few – the idea that the nature of the messenger is critical
2. The Stickiness Factor – the quality of the message has to be good enough to be worth acting on
3. The Power of Context – people are exquisitely sensitive to changes of time, place and circumstance

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The three areas aren't that original – they are roughly similar to medium, message and target audience
• It is easy to get distracted by the three groups of people who may start a tipping point: Connectors (people who know a lot of people), Mavens (those who accumulate knowledge, but are not persuaders), and Salesmen (people who are very persuasive). These may be more relevant to PR than paid-for communication
• It is quite American, with many examples relating to the USA (for example, how removing graffiti reduced the crime rate in New York in the eighties). Thought is needed with regard to application elsewhere
• Even if a marketing strategy overtly sets out to create a tipping point, they are so idiosyncratic and hard to predict that it might not work

In addition to this week's book summary, here is my podcast on Freakomics by Levitt and Dubner and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Download Outliers and Freakonomics (by Malcolm Gladwell and Levitt & Dubner

Following the great response to the Greatest Hits idea (3,500 hits so far), I have recorded a dozen podcasts of the some of the most popular books.  They are about 5 minutes each and I'm also posting one of these a week (for the next 12 weeks).

First up, Blink. 

Download Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

This is not a book on one theme – it is a compendium of his best essays for the New Yorker magazine over the last ten years or so, organised into three sections: i) Obsessives, pioneers, and other varieties of minor genius; ii) Theories, predictions and diagnoses; iii) Personality, character & intelligence.

The title refers to his take on how Cesar Millan, aka the Dog Whisperer, does what he does. Gladwell is more interested in the dog’s perspective, and it transpires that the dog’s response is mainly to his body language.

He teases out scores of curiosities, including:

• Most things are not interesting
• Perfection is plural: everybody has different version of it
• Heinz Ketchup remains unchanged and unbeatable because it covers every one of the five tastes we crave – salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami – all in one product (umami is a proteiny, full-bodied taste).
• The Clairol strapline “Does she or doesn’t she?”, followed by L’Oreal’s “Because I’m worth it” plots the course of female liberation in the 20th century.
• Progress often comes in advance of understanding, as with the invention of the contraceptive pill.
• A puzzle is not the same as a mystery. Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts are a puzzle. How Enron collapsed is actually a mystery.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

The wisdom keeps coming:

• Stop managing problems and start ending them.
• Solving issues means connecting the dots and spotting the sequence. Many people just can’t do it. They just see ink blots like the Rorschach Test (he was the 20th century Swiss psychiatrist who invented it).
• Claiming retrospectively that something was coherent or made sense all along is a case of creeping determinism (x apparently determined y, but it didn’t really). This affects many business case histories, and much journalism.
• Choking is loss of instinct (a tennis player reverts to thinking about each shot and loses the game). Panic is reversion to instinct (a diver grabs instinctively for a companion’s air supply without realising they can share and both be fine).
• Risk homeostasis is where changes intended to make a system safer actually make it worse. When ABS brakes are fitted to cars people drive faster and have more accidents, because they think they are safer.
• There is no such thing as inherent genius. There are as many late bloomers as there are child prodigies.
• If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe the box needs fixing.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

All the essays are available for free on his website, so you don’t have to pay £20.