The book that I will be reading during this quarter is The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. This week I read the first 30 pages. Those pages were all about how the little things could makes such a big impact. For example, In 1995, Hush Puppies, a type of shoe that were popular in the fifties that were about to stop being made, suddenly started to sell like crazy because a few people in one neighborhood of New York City started to wear them. I thought this concept of a tipping point was very interesting. I think with most of these trends/epidemics, when they first start to catch on, aren’t looked too much into for the minor reasons why the trend started. This book shows that the minor details actually can make a big impact. I’ve always been told that ‘the little things matter’ but I haven’t really noticed it until this reading. Additionally, Gladwell wrote that when these tipping points occur, the trend would exponentially increase or decrease in popularity.

Another interesting theory that Gladwell spoke about was the 80-20 rule. As an example, normally 80% of a company's sales would come from 20% of the customers; A tipping point occurs when it changes a lot and goes to extremes. The first thing I thought about when I read this was the Occupy Wall Street movement. The movement started when  people found out that about 1% of the nation owned about 40% of the wealth. According to the 80-20 rule, one could predict that this would mean that a tipping point would occur which it did when the movement started. I also was curious whether this rule is commonly used by businesses or if it is an original rule that Gladwell came up with. I looked it up and found out that businesses do use this rule and it is especially helpful while investing which makes sense.