Who is he?
The business guru worked for The Washington Post as a science writer and later as New York bureau chief. In 1996 he joined The New Yorker. He is ranked 31 in the Thinkers 50.
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What’s he famous for?
Two bestselling books. In The Tipping Point (2000), he examined how ideas take hold and found parallels with the spread of infections. In particular, it takes only one or two people acting as carriers to spread cultural infection. Once it takes hold, it shows as a dramatic upward curve. The point at which the curve hits critical mass is the “tipping point” — the fulcrum that tips it into becoming an epidemic.
And the other book?
In Blink (2005), he explored the power of the human brain. He says that there are two ways to think — the spur-of-the-moment variety performed very quickly and apparently independent of the second type: careful analysis. For Gladwell, the first kind of thinking is done in a blink and helps to explain what managers call intuition or “gut feel”.
All sounds very academic
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Not really. Both books are written in a narrative style. In fact, Leonardo DiCaprio has bought the rights to Blink and intends to make a film tied to its concepts.
www.thinkers50.com