Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

by Malcolm Gladwell

can guess that too: Florida. A few years after that, he decided to run for governor of… you guessed it: Florida, where he served two terms before moving on to represent… yes, Florida, in the United States Senate. For a portion of the years that Philip Esformes ran a billion-dollar scheme of kickbacks, false billing, and illegal deals, the governor of his state was someone who had presided over a hospital system that ran a billion-dollar scheme of kickbacks, false billing, and illegal deals. When Philip Esformes went home at night and saw Rick Scott holding forth on television from the most powerful position in the state, do you think it changed the way he thought about his own behavior? The canopy high over the forest floor casts a shadow on everything beneath it. The overstory is specific. It is tied to a place. It is powerful. It shapes behavior. And it does not emerge out of nowhere. It happens for a reason. 7.