Malcolm explores why we can't trust people's opinions -- because we don't have the language to express our feelings. His examples include the story of New Coke and how Coke's market research misled them, and the development of Herman-Miller's Aeron chair, the best-selling chair in the history of office chairs, which succeeded in spite of research that suggested it would fail.

Author and New Yorker Magazine journalist Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, has been a tremendous bestseller for over three years and counting. His next compelling release, Blink, is expected in January of 2005. Malcolm has the uncanny ability to interpret research findings and tantalizing theories in sociology and other fields and apply them to business and organizational problems to generate value.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm explains the dynamics of trends and helps organizations apply this knowledge to their own business strategies. He shows how ideas and trends start and spread and offers tools for igniting, steering and/or sustaining trends that matter, whether in business, society, politics, technology, or consumer behavior. He also helps organizations identify the types of people that are crucial to the trend process and deploy their talents strategically. The ideas in The Tipping Point have kept the book on various bestseller lists for three years, including over two years on the Business Week paperback bestseller list.

In his forthcoming book, Blink, Malcolm analyzes social intuition, or how we know what we know in social situations, and especially, how we read facial expressions. The muscles of the face and the emotions are linked in ways that are just now beginning to astonish researchers. Facial expressions, it turns out, may be as critical to communication as words. This presentation can enlighten anyone for whom human interaction deeply affects what they do. Blink will do for our knowledge of communication, both personal and corporate, what The Tipping Point has done for our understanding of trends.

Facilitation graphics by Peter Durand of Alphachimp Studio
David Weinberger's blog
Renee Blodgett's blog

This presentation is one of many from the IT Conversations archives of Pop!Tech 2004 held in Camden, Maine, October 21-23, 2004.