When I read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point – How Little Things Make a Big Difference I really wanted to produce an article about it. But it never happened. Now, 25 years after he’d published that book, he returned to the subject with more case studies and more reflections in a new book, titled Revenge of the Tipping Point – Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering.
Why revenge? Because while in the first book he was quite optimistic, now he has assessed the consequences of the arrival of social media and the spread of misinformation algorithms that tailor content to individual preferences and confine people to their echo-chambers. This, plus his further research, led him to conclude that some tipping points are manipulated through less than ethical social engineering that may be beneficial but often comes with harmful consequences.
What we have seen as consequences of these echo-chambers in many countries is the passing of tipping points from the centre in politics to more extreme left-wing and right-wing positions, and so for moderate incumbent parties to be voted out of office.
Let me home in on just a couple of tipping point examples from the 2024 book, and first Gladwell’s story about how in the 1950s African-Americans were moving out of many cities in the South in great numbers to escape the hostile environments there. Their arrival in northern city neighbourhoods in turn provoked the “White Flight” from them, crossing tipping points that then greatly accelerated the number moving.
The trend was very strong in Atlanta, which personified “The New South”, and became a far less racist one. In the 1960s, 60,000 white people fled the city, whose population at that time was just 300,000. That’s 20 per cent, gone. Then in the 1970s another 100,000 white people fled.
In 1974 I spent a few days in Atlanta, on a work-study assignment during my Sloan MBA year at the London Business School, and I was fortunate to witness the positive side of The New South. There I saw the non-segregationist mindset we have recently been reminded of that Jimmy Carter displayed. We met with the city’s first African-American mayor, Maynard Jackson, and enjoyed other uplifting evidence of a more integrated society.
My other example relates to Ivy League universities like Harvard, whose leaders began worrying that their elitist swagger was being diluted by bright young students from less privileged backgrounds. What could they do to avoid crossing a threshold beyond which that would spread like wildfire? They continued with their regular track for smart students around the world who competed merely on their academic merits. But they then introduced a second “ALDC” track, where ALDC stands for Athletes; Legacies (children of alumni); Dean’s interest list (children of rich people); and Children of faculty.
Gladwell reports on the in-depth studies which show how the ALDC candidates receive preferential treatment, showing that now the easiest way to get into the world’s most prestigious university is not to be the best student academically but the best athlete.
Gladwell also writes about how in the 1920s Columbia University, the most prestigious in New York, faced a crisis as the children of the Jewish immigrants who had arrived in large numbers at the turn of the century were now of college age, and with high scores on their entrance exams now comprised forty per cent of its undergraduate population. The White Anglo Saxon Protestant elite were not amused by this tipping point, so they devised subtle ways of limiting Jewish enrolment.
As I was reading the book I asked myself about phenomena that had passed tipping points here in Kenya. Two immediately occurred to me: bad driving and corruption. How did each of these reach its tipping point to then become so widespread? Clearly impunity is a lead factor, allowing easy benefits to accrue to selfish drivers and to those bribing and being bribed, who then become role models for others.
So the next question is this. What kind of steps can be taken to reverse this trend that has spread like wildfire, to reach a reverse tipping point where courteous driving and ethical transacting can become the norm? We know the answers. It’s just proving too hard to apply the evident truths they contain… but maybe Gen Z can help us along the way.
Let me conclude by strongly recommending these two books to you. For tipping points exist in so many contexts and at all levels. They can lead to either positive or negative new scenarios, ones that should be encouraged or discouraged to materialise. Whether one crosses the tipping point or not is a choice, and it requires great expertise to influence the outcome. Read Gladwell to help you realise what it takes.
