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11 unusual facts about Malcolm Gladwell


Andrew Mason

It was found that The Point – a social initiatives platform whose name was inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point – was too abstract to market, and it was stripped down to the Groupon concept.

Avianca Flight 52

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, the crash of Flight 52 was discussed in a section on different ethnic groups responses to authority figures.

Bryony Lavery

Frozen triggered a controversy and discussion about artistic sources and plagiarism and was the subject of a piece by Malcolm Gladwell published in The New Yorker and also collected in his book What the Dog Saw.

Fred Soper

Fred Soper was featured by journalist Malcolm Gladwell in a July 2, 2001 New Yorker article titled "The Mosquito Killer."

Herbert Wachtell

Wachtell is discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers; however, he is considered to be an extremely private person.

Herd mentality

More recently, Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, examines how cultural, social, and economic factors converge to create trends in consumer behavior.

Ian Rowland

Citing Rowland's recitation of the tricks of "astrologers and psychics," journalist Malcolm Gladwell has criticised the practice of offender profiling by the FBI.

Joseph H. Flom

Malcolm Gladwell devoted a chapter to Flom in his book Outliers, crediting him with building out and diversifying the firm and anticipating the rise of mergers and acquisitions as a specialty.

Shopping mall

For pioneering the soon-to-be enormously popular mall concept in this form, Gruen has been called the "most influential architect of the twentieth century" by Malcolm Gladwell.

Todd Kessler

According to author Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote about Blue's Clues in his book The Tipping Point, Kessler worked for Sesame Workshop's "Sesame Street", but found traditional children's television too static and not visual enough.

William Dawes

The difference in Revere's and Dawes's achievement and legacy is examined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point, where he concludes that Revere would be classified as a connector whereas Dawes was an "ordinary man."


Dorothy Otnow Lewis

In 2004 Lewis alleged that British playwright Bryony Lavery's hit Broadway play Frozen, particularly the character of 'Agnetha', a psychiatrist sent to evaluate a serial killer, was based on thematic similarities with her book Guilty by Reason of Insanity and verbatim extracts from a New Yorker article about her by Malcolm Gladwell.

William S. Condon

In Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 book, The Tipping Point, he cites Condon's research to help explain why some "Salesman" types may contribute more to word-of-mouth cultural 'epidemics'.