Page 64 - The Complexity Perspective 20 02 18

 Since the publication of Malcolm Gladwell's book, hunting
tipping points has become a popular hobby in the press.
However, not all apparent tipping points are real, often the

turning points in an S-curve can be mistaken for a tipping point
when, in reality, they are an artifact of the curve itself.

 There are two kinds of tipping point.

A direct tip where the change occurs in the variable itself;

example, a respected investor sells his/her holdings in a
company triggering others to dump the stock.

The second is a contextual tip, where a change in some other
variable so changes the context that the variable of interest shifts.

Example, the Treasury Secretary comments that an interest rate
rise is likely; the next day there is a sell-off in the bond market.
The Secretary did not buy or sell bonds or even make a

recommendation but the context was changed.

Both direct and contextual tips may be deliberate, the result of a
manipulative action. Such manipulations may be legal in the

normal course of business, others may be illegal or immoral
designed to induce panic for profit.

 Initial tips: These are tips at the start of diffusion. When the

diffusion of Facebook through the population occurred, it
described the expected S-shape with the upswing in the adoption
curve occurring about 2007: an apparent tipping point. But,
further research could not discover any reason behind the

upswing other than the normal operating of diffusion, a
graphical phenomenon.

However, it could be argued that there was indeed a tipping
point for Facebook but that it occurred much earlier. The real

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