Malcolm Gladwell just started a blog according to Boing Boing and talked about the beginning of radio as a Tipping Point; it happened in New York due to a sports broadcast that happened in 1921 and that was the Tipping Point for radio.  After that there were 1200+ advertisers.

The person who started the new technology of radio was someone who knew people but did not have economic or political power - but he had SOCIAL POWER. 

The sports broadcast recasted the idea of what a broadcast was.  Everyone was selling newspapers when Radio came on the scene - and gave instantanous access to the event, something Newspapers could not do.

Another example Malcolm gives is seatbelts; we jumped as a nation from a 15% seatbelts to 65% seatbelts within a couple of years.  The original argument was the goverment was telling people what to do in their cars. Once the argument was reframed to children safety - and that sold people on the idea so the majority went with it.

Yet another idea where there was a Tipping Point was the Apple IPod; Apple reframed the argument and changed the marketing - not a recorder, cassette player - but rather a silcon chip where you can have a little one or a big one.

How quickly does change happen?   People reject change and innovation because they think it’s too hard, will take too long and not so much because they don’t believe in it.   Malcolm references the Berlin Wall which fell much more quickly than what people thought would happen (i think it was September - October 1989) - biggest change - the fall of the Berlin Wall actually only took a month.

We need to de-couple causes from effects and that if we want to have a big effect we must have big cause.  Malcolm Gladwell focues on Social Power which he feels is more important than political or economic power.  In any group of people there are a small number of people who know 5 or 6 times more people than anyone else and can move ideas because of that - he calls these "Connectors".

Malcolm knows of people that belong not to but two or three social worlds, but 14 or 15 social worlds and can overcome many obstacles.