Monday, March 09, 2009
I'd like to start by recommending a book. It's called The Tipping Point and was written by Malcolm Gladwell.
At the same time, at work I am frequently reminded that not everything gets a tipping point. One day, H.I. claimed to have seen some kind of 1970s BMW motor home in the parking lot. Sure enough, a few days later, I ran into this on the way to my car:
After a bit of research, we found out that this thing is called a Vixen and that there were only about 500 of these made. I'm sure the guy who came up with this (apparently Bill Collins) had visions of thousands of families squeezing into their Vixens (or is the plural just "Vixen"?) and hitting the national parks. For whatever reason, the tipping point for a motor home that fits in a single parking spot never came.
That said, maybe the Vixen will become the new tattoo. The chances of randomly running into another Vixen owner are even smaller than me running into someone from Beatty, so it's a fairly exclusive club (literally - they have their own club). Sure, joining the club is probably more expensive than getting a weird haircut, but it's certainly less permanent than a tattoo and far more utilitarian, particularly if you want to take a nap at lunch.
As put by one reviewer, the book expounds on the idea that "little changes can have big effects; when small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or 'tipping point' is reached, changing the world." Very inspiring.
Again, I'd like to recommend this book. I'd like to, but I've never read it. I assume it's a good book, because I've had two copies for 6 or 7 years now. One I think I picked up during a class in business school, and another was a birthday gift (to the gifter, on the off chance you read this blog, sorry about that - I'll get to it).
So admittedly, I don't know all the details. Still, I've thought about the underlying principle a bit lately. For example, I don't know what the tipping point on tattoos was, but I wouldn't be against jumping back in time to just before that point and tipping things the other way. I mean, it was bad enough when the barbed-wire-around-the-bicep thing started to take off, but the tattoo-on-the-lower-back thing has really gotten out of hand. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I think it's a bit ironic that people probably started out getting tattoos to show some individuality but in the process permanently gave up a bit of individuality when everyone else did the same thing.Again, I'd like to recommend this book. I'd like to, but I've never read it. I assume it's a good book, because I've had two copies for 6 or 7 years now. One I think I picked up during a class in business school, and another was a birthday gift (to the gifter, on the off chance you read this blog, sorry about that - I'll get to it).
At the same time, at work I am frequently reminded that not everything gets a tipping point. One day, H.I. claimed to have seen some kind of 1970s BMW motor home in the parking lot. Sure enough, a few days later, I ran into this on the way to my car:
That said, maybe the Vixen will become the new tattoo. The chances of randomly running into another Vixen owner are even smaller than me running into someone from Beatty, so it's a fairly exclusive club (literally - they have their own club). Sure, joining the club is probably more expensive than getting a weird haircut, but it's certainly less permanent than a tattoo and far more utilitarian, particularly if you want to take a nap at lunch.
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