Second Half of Chapter Two

The beginning of the second half of chapter two continues with this idea of everyone being connected in a few steps. He uses Kevin Bacon as an example by taking another actor/actress and saying that he/she was in a movie with another actor who was in a move with another actor who was in the same movie as Kevin Bacon. Apparently, Rod Steiger "is the best connected actor in history." According to Gladwell, this is because Steiger has been in all different types and levels of movies. I think what Gladwell is trying to get at is that everyone is a "Connector." However, in business, you want to find that Connector who has the most connections so the business' product can sell to more people. These major Connectors are people who are present in many different worlds and subcultures, allowing them to know more people.
Gladwell proceeds by discussing the Getting a Job study. Sociologist Mark Granovetter interviewed people in Newton about their employment history. Over half had gotten their jobs through a personal connection, around twenty percent from advertisements, and another twenty percent just applied directly for the job. To continue his study Granovetter discovered that those connections that people had to get their jobs were merely weak.
After giving a ton of examples about connectors, and even going back to his Paul Revere example, Gladwell starts to talk about Mavens. According to Gladwell, a Maven is a person who always feels the need to help someone else by making informed decisions in business. Gladwell states that Revere is not only a Connector, but also a Maven. They are good at getting people's attention as well and are very good at starting a word-of-mouth epidemic, which is why Revere was given as an example.
Finally, Gladwell talks about one last type of person, a Salesman. A Salesman is someone with great charisma and are very persuasive in getting someone to buy a product or service they are trying to sell.

What I Did This Week

Throughout the week, Madi and I worked on parts five and six alone. This was extremely frustrating considering we had to keep recalculating everyone once one number was changed even by one digit. We were unable to finish these parts because we needed Sophia to contact a hair salon and ask certain questions. However, she wasn't in class, again, and we were unable to get her information because she never puts it online. She only messages on Facebook to say that her conversation went well. This was extremely frustrating to the group as a whole because we have had many extensions already on our storefront project and we still don't have all the information. Once Sophia is able to come to class and give us the information Madi and I need, we will be able to finish calculating for part five and finish the write up. Our write up is only about a quarter done for part 6. This is because there was no point in typing up everything if we would have to redo the whole thing again once we get the information Sophia is supposed to bring us. 

What is very frustrating to the group and to me is that we give her an assignment, say to call someone. She goes and does that in the beginning of class and never returns to tell us what happened. We physically have to run into her to ask what happened. This has occurred at least twice already and it's unfair to the rest of the group. We are also unable to discuss this issue with her because she is rarely in class as well.

For part five, Madi and I had to continuously look back at part four, which together we finished the write up for last week. We had to keep rechecking our work and making sure that we had all the correct numbers before figuring how much we would actually be making at the end of each month. I like this project a lot and I know my other group members are doing useful work, but it just feels as though Madi and I really did the majority of the parts, especially all of the write ups. 

I'm really hoping Sophia shows up to class on Monday so we can at least get her information so we can finish up part five and do the write up for part six. I really want this part of the project to be completed before we go on break, but we all need to work together to get there. 

As for the $200 project, the flyers are going to be printed today by my dad and we will hang them up next week around the school, so we can sell them when everyone gets back from break.

First Half of Chapter 2

Gladwell begins this chapter by discussing a young boy going and telling Paul Revere that he had heard a British army officer say "hell pay tomorrow." Revere was finally convinced that the British were going to do something bad- in this case the march to Lexington, making Revere do his midnight a ride. When the British arrived in Concord, they were greeted with a colonial militia, which started the American Revolution. This particular case is an example of a word of mouth epidemic. Gladwell continues by saying that word of mouth is one of the most important means of communication today. We are heavily influenced by others, which is why we spend money, like going to certain stores or movies, on places our friends/peers have recommended to us. He points out that just that isn't enough to make a particular business successful. "Why is it that some ideas and trends and messages 'tip' and others don't?" For Revere, his message spread like wildfire, however, William Dawes had the same message at the same time, yet his message wasn't deemed as successful as Revere's.
In the next part of the chapter, Gladwell talks about a psychologist named Stanley Milgram who wanted to figure out how are humans connected. What Milgram did was he found the names of 160 people in Omaha and mailed each one of them a packet. The packet had the name of a stockbroker in Boston and Milgram told those 160 people to send this packet to others who would get it closer and closer to the stockbroker. What Milgram wanted to do was find out all the people the packet went through in order to get to the stockbroker. It took only five steps to get there; Gladwell states that because of this experiment, we now get the concept of six degrees of separation. This doesn't mean that everyone is literally linked together in only six steps, "it means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few."
But what does any of this have to do with business? I think the point Gladwell, at this point, is trying to get across is that word of mouth is honestly one of the most important things for a business to get customers. Gladwell is trying to figure out why some are more successful in getting people to listen and follow through with what he or she is saying and why some are not.
Gladwell begins talking about how all your friends link together in some way or another, but I'm not so sure what it really has to do with anything.He had made a list of 250 people's surnames and gave it around and asked if anyone knew anyone with those last names. I think Gladwell is just trying to get the point across that we're all connected in one way or another, but I'm not sure how this relates back to business.
I like this book and I know it's not really about business, but sometimes I can relate what he is saying to being about business and other times I really don't see exactly what he's trying to prove and it's a little frustrating.

What I Did This Week

This week, my group got a decent amount done, but we still have a lot more work to put into the storefront project. I worked on part four and found out how much the majority of the items cost that we must buy in order to make our hair salon business into a reality. Sophia had found this salon that had gone out of business and is going to sell all of their furniture, including the hair cutting chairs and wash stations. She said she would sell everything to us for a little over five thousand dollars, which is a really good deal. However, the woman thinks we are actually interested in her furniture, which isn't too great. Part four took a lot of time especially because of the insurance information. Madi obtained some of it, but we still need a little more insurances we have to account for. I tried contacting people as well to figure insurance information, but the reply was "I can't give you an estimate unless you fill out a questionnaire." Madi and I also worked together for part five and had to figure in all of the costs and how much on average we thought we could make in a day to find our gross revenue. On Wednesday, Rachel and I even went back to the store front and did more measurements during c block. We created a layout plan (not on paper) and tried to figure where everything could go. We are putting in a lot of work into figuring out all the costs and the layout, it actually makes me want to open this business, even though we can't. We still need to complete part six, but Madi and I were able to complete part five in class yesterday.
On another note, we have made the fliers for our bracelets we will be selling. We just need to find a colored printer, most likely from my mom's work, so we can post them around the school next week. Other good news is that the bracelets were shipped yesterday.

Intro & Chapter 1

What I have read about is rather interesting. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell starts off by talking about Hush Puppies, a once unpopular shoe brand, and how practically overnight, it became the next fad. To help the reader better understand this, he talks about many different examples of change overnight. The one that stuck with me the most was Gladwell's story about his puppy seeing the snow for the first time. The night before had a similar temperature of about 33 degrees and the next morning was 31 degrees. However, snow covered the ground, causing the puppy much delight, unlike the night before. The temperature had only dropped two degrees and it made a huge difference. The point he was making was that change occurs rather quickly and that things become "in" almost overnight. Back to the Hush Puppies, Gladwell said no one would ever wear them at first. When teenagers and some model wore them, everyone went out and bought them and sales skyrocketed.

In the first chapter, Gladwell starts speaking about the syphilis epidemic that occurred in Baltimore. There had always been sexually transmitted diseases, like syphilis, in Baltimore, however, in the 90's, people who had this disease increased greatly. Gladwell got three different opinions as to why this became an epidemic. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) stated that it was due to crack cocaine, since it causes people to want engage in sexual behavior. Also, when people want to buy crack, they tend to go into poorer areas where these sexually transmitted diseases are more present. This increases the chance of buyers to bring back these diseases into their own neighborhoods, causing it to spread. Zenilman, an expert in sexually transmitted diseases, believed that the increase in syphilis was due to STD clinics having less employees working there. Finally, Potterat, a leading epidemiologist, thinks that this is occurring because of public housing being shut down. What is important to notice, is that all three point out the change that they believe set off a syphilis epidemic, showing that something small can set off something like an epidemic.

There is something known as the 80/20 Principle, which means that eighty percent of work is done by only twenty percent of people. For example, Darnell "Boss Man" McGee was a man who went to a skating rink often and picked up thirteen to fourteen year olds, He gave them crack and had sex with them and within over the hundred partners he had, he gave around thirty a sexually transmitted disease. This specific example portrays the 80/20 Principle.

This book is starting off a little weird. It's interesting and I was even able to make a connection to my history class this year. Gladwell told the story of how Kitty Genovese was stabbed multiple times in one night and her whole apartment building heard and saw what was happening, yet no one called the police until after. We studied this particular case in my Legal Studies class and I found that to be pretty cool. I like how Gladwell is connecting the business world with these HIV and murder stories because it gives liveliness to this topic. I do hope he gets more into business, though. I am excited to keep reading forward.

What I Have Done This Week

This week, my group and I got a decent amount done, yet I am still not satisfied with what we are doing. For the storefront project, we split up the group for that three part document, which should be complete by next class (today), so we are on the ball for that project. However, I'm not happy with our $200 project. We wanted to do something holiday themed, so we decided to have a movie night. We are trying to reserve a place for this either in the auditorium or in the MLK room, so we do not have to pay for a space. But the MLK room is very tight and they don't know if we can use the auditorium yet, since it may be being used by someone else. The bad news is that the majority of holiday movies are Christmas themed while most families in Brookline are Jewish. I personally don't think it's a big deal, since we were only planning on showing Elf and How the Grinch Stole Christmas- both of which are classics and movies that many people love. Another service we were planning on doing in addition to this movie night is to help people who need assistance in buying gifts, baking cookies for a party,etc. We had gone to Ms. Holman on Tuesday and she said we could use the Weekly Blast to advertise this and she gave me the email to contact the head person of that. However, the head woman said that the only way she could send this out on the Weekly Blast is if all the profits made would be sent to charity, which defeats the whole purpose of the assignment. If we can't get Ms. Holman to allow us to send this out via email, we might have to drop this holiday themed project and do something else. Rachel had this idea to make those live-strong bracelets but targeted at each BHS class. Seniors and sophomores would get blue bracelets with red writing and juniors and freshman would get the opposite. These bracelets would also include their graduating class and say Brookline Warriors or something. We will need to discuss more in class today, but it seems that our holiday idea is falling apart and Christmas break is coming up very soon. I hope we're able to figure something out today that we can all agree on. I'm starting to become frustrated with this holiday project because it seems to be falling apart, but at least it fell apart now and not closer to when we would show the movie.