The Economist – The Malcolm Gladwell rule: how to succeed while annoying critics

Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, "Revenge of the Tipping Point," revisits themes that have defined his success: the power of social science to explain the unexpected. While some criticize him for oversimplifying complex issues, his storytelling captivates millions. In this book, Gladwell explores if understanding tipping points can help avoid them, posing challenging questions on social engineering. Despite criticisms, his knack for turning ideas into engaging narratives continues to resonate widely..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com© 2024 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved..The Economist.A new book offers a chance to assess why he has global appeal .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.You know what you're getting when you open a book by Malcolm Gladwell. It will centre around a modestly counterintuitive argument: being huge and strong is often a disadvantage, for instance, or talent and genius are overrated. Evidence for this thesis will be broken into around ten chapters, each containing a combination of briskly written reportage, historical anecdote and social science that draws out unexpected connections—between, for example, Lawrence of Arabia and a girls' basketball team, or a high-achieving school district and the wild-cheetah population. Readers will finish the book feeling better informed about how the world works..Mr Gladwell's detractors say this feeling is an illusion. Social scientists who have reviewed his writing snarkily point out minor factual errors. Others consider him a "bullshitter" who cherry-picks data, oversimplifies complex questions and sprinkles social science over platitudes to make them seem profound. For his part, Mr Gladwell has argued that "People who read books in America seem to have no problem with my writing. But I am clearly a bee in the bonnet of some of the kinds of people who review books." On the one hand that sounds defiantly folksy. On the other it is a tacit admission that the people who read his work most closely find flaws..Such criticism, however, has done little to dent Mr Gladwell's success. He has sold 23m books in North America alone. Six of his seven books have been international bestsellers. Three of them ("Outliers", "Talking to Strangers" and "The Tipping Point") spent, combined, around 18 years on the New York Times bestseller list. He hosts a popular podcast, "Revisionist History", now in its tenth season, and commands six-figure speaking fees..Mr Gladwell revealed a market for idea-driven books that use social science to illuminate pop culture and render the world more comprehensible. In his wake, authors such as Daniel Kahneman ("Thinking, Fast and Slow") and Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner ("Freakonomics") found similar fame. Mr Gladwell's name has become an adjective: one veteran book editor says, "When people pitch me something they want to portray as a 'big idea' book, they always say, 'It's very Gladwellian.'".His new book, "Revenge of the Tipping Point", provides an opportunity to assess his success and his critics' arguments. It returns to familiar ground: Mr Gladwell titled his first book, published 24 years ago, "The Tipping Point". In essence, it was an epidemiological metaphor strung across ten chapters, arguing that ideas, habits and practices can grow exponentially from a tiny starting-point, just as contagious diseases do, and that they have a "tipping point" when minor becomes major..He posited three rules of epidemics: the "law of the few", which states that big social changes often stem from the actions of a small number of people; the "stickiness factor", which argues that "There are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable"; and the "power of context", which says that "Human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem.".Rule-making is a Gladwellian hallmark. In "David and Goliath" (2013) the rule is that "The powerful and strong are not always what they seem." In "Outliers" (2008) he proposes "the 10,000-hour rule", which posits—using Bill Gates, the Beatles, violinists and chess grandmasters as evidence—that is the minimal amount of practice time required to become great at something. Learning these rules makes readers feel smarter: stories are what happened, whereas rules have an implied predictive power about what will happen. They also deliver a hit of narrative satisfaction: a moral at the end of the parable..Often, though, these rules are less profound than they appear. Large conventional armies (Goliaths) have long been vulnerable to nimble guerrilla Davids. Mr Gladwell called 10,000 hours "the magic number of greatness"; the research on which he bases this is much less conclusive..Mr Gladwell at first appears to be heading down the same old path in his new book. After writing about the rash of bank robberies in Los Angeles in the 1980s-90s (attributable to enterprising gangsters and copycats) and low vaccination rates among students at Waldorf independent schools, Mr Gladwell wonders why these trends did not spread to other cities or schools: "There must be a set of rules, buried somewhere below the surface.".The heart of this book, however, is not rules, but a delightfully tricky question: if people understand where a tipping point lies, can they avoid it, and at what cost? Opioid prescriptions, for instance, are markedly lower in states with relatively onerous reporting requirements for doctors. Should a state try to engineer its way out of some future addiction crisis by imposing burdensome regulations?.Harvard, Mr Gladwell argues, engages in a more nefarious sort of social engineering: by easing admissions standards for athletes in obscure and sometimes expensive sports such as fencing and sailing, it favours white students. If older and heavier people spread viruses more widely than younger and thinner ones, as research cited by Mr Gladwell suggests they might, should others refuse to sit next to them on a plane during a pandemic? Around 10% of vehicles cause more than half of car-based air pollution; if a roadside test can target them more precisely than standard emissions tests can, should they be taken off the road, even if a large share of them belong to poor people who cannot afford a replacement?.Mr Gladwell, to his credit, declines to tip his hand, inviting readers to consider how they feel about social engineering. But these sorts of questions have a dark edge to them; whereas Mr Gladwell's first take on "The Tipping Point" was largely wide-eyed and optimistic, this book reflects a more techno-sceptical age..Two things are near-certain about this book: it will wind up, probably soon, on bestseller lists. His detractors, also soon, will sneer at it. Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard, said in a review in 2009 that "Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out.".This line of criticism misses the point. Mr Gladwell is not a social scientist, nor does he claim to be. He is a journalist who popularises ideas from social science using what he has called "intellectual adventure stories…Their conclusions," he concedes, "can seem simplified or idiosyncratic." But stories are also, to use a Gladwellian phrase, sticky. The 10,000-hour rule is memorable; "work hard" is the forgettable line that every coach, teacher and parent has said a million times over..His work may be formulaic, but so are spy novels, romantic comedies and pop songs. The secret to his success lies less in what he says than in how he says it. Mr Gladwell is a great storyteller and writes with a contagious sense of curiosity, with each revelation seeming as exciting to him as it is to readers. He may be an entertainer, but there are worse ways of being entertained than being prodded to think differently about the world..Read also:.🔒 The best business books aren't actually about business: Tyler CowenUnlocking timeless wisdom: The enchanting reasons for adults to embrace children's booksRoald Dahl books reissued with sanitised language, sparking censorship debate – Barry D. Wood

The Economist – The Malcolm Gladwell rule: how to succeed while annoying critics

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