From The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell
- When people are in a group, responsibility for acting is diffused. They assume that someone else will make the call, or they assume that since no one else is acting, the apparent problem isn't really a problem.
- Your friends after all occupy the same world to know that you do. They might work with you, live near you, and go to the same churches, schools or parties. How much, then, would they know that you wouldn't know? Your acquaintances on the other hand, by definition occupy a different world than you. They are much more likely to know something that you don't. To capture this apparent paradox, Granovetter coined a marvelous phrase: the strength of weak ties. Acquaintances, in short, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances that you have, the more powerful you are. We rely on them to give us access to opportunities and worlds to which we don't belong.
- The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost. We have, of course, an instinctive disdain for this kind of solution because there is something in all of us that feels that true answers to problems have to be comprehensive, that there is a virtue in the dogged and indiscriminate application of effort, that slow and steady should win the race. The problem, of course, is that the indiscriminate application of effort is something that is not always possible. There are times when we need a convenient shortcut, a way to make a lot out of a little, and that is what Tipping Points, in the end, are all about.
- When people are in a group, responsibility for acting is diffused. They assume that someone else will make the call, or they assume that since no one else is acting, the apparent problem isn't really a problem.
- Your friends after all occupy the same world to know that you do. They might work with you, live near you, and go to the same churches, schools or parties. How much, then, would they know that you wouldn't know? Your acquaintances on the other hand, by definition occupy a different world than you. They are much more likely to know something that you don't. To capture this apparent paradox, Granovetter coined a marvelous phrase: the strength of weak ties. Acquaintances, in short, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances that you have, the more powerful you are. We rely on them to give us access to opportunities and worlds to which we don't belong.
- The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost. We have, of course, an instinctive disdain for this kind of solution because there is something in all of us that feels that true answers to problems have to be comprehensive, that there is a virtue in the dogged and indiscriminate application of effort, that slow and steady should win the race. The problem, of course, is that the indiscriminate application of effort is something that is not always possible. There are times when we need a convenient shortcut, a way to make a lot out of a little, and that is what Tipping Points, in the end, are all about.
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See you again soon okay? =)