The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

The Law of the Few indicates that “the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts” (33), namely Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.

Connectors “link us up with the world” and have “a special gift for bringing the world together” (38). Connectors know many people from “different worlds and subcultures and niches” (48). Gladwell uses the Chicago Connector Lois Weisberg, who worked as the city's cultural commissioner and promoted public arts, as an example. Weisberg had a wealth of contacts from various worlds, including actors, writers, doctors, lawyers, and politicians. Like all the best Connectors, she had “a foot in so many different worlds, [she had] the effect of bringing them all together” (51) at her racially integrated salons in the 1950s and continued these efforts in the large-scale public arts programs she developed. Connectors can find something interesting about anybody, and they thrive among acquaintances and the weak ties that characterize these relationships. The sociologist Mark Granovetter writes that acquaintances “represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are” (54).