Shriya Rathi

The Tipping Point

The reading in this section was bit different, but still interesting.  It goes into the psychology of what happens when there is an emergency.  They did a study and when there were more people it was less likely that people would call 911 when they witnessed an emergency.  It comes down to the idea that people assume someone else will make that call, or that because no one else is calling it is not an emergency.  When they are less people however, it more likely someone will try to help.  I think this is interesting because often times you feel safer when you are in bigger crowds, but in reality people are less likely to come to you aid.  This has to do with the fact that when people are in a group they lose some sense of responsibility. Gladwell uses this interesting example to prove a bigger point about getting people to change their behavior. How can you make the person care about the person in need of help? ( according to the example).  Getting people to change their behavior lies with the small details in their immediate attention.  Gladwell calls this concept the power of context.  The power of context is the idea that human being are significantly more sensitive to their environment than they may seem.  What i took away from this is that people’s behaviors are  correlated with the environment they are in.  In order to make a certain type of impact you have to aware of this.

Shriya Rathi

The Tipping Point

I really liked the reading for this section.  It was about something he calls the “Stickiness Factor”.   The stickiness factor deals with the idea of contagious messages, and how there are specific ways of making them memorable.  They are small changes in the presentation of something that can make a big difference oh how much an impact it makes.  I thought this was interesting because earlier this year we focused a lot on making our powerpoints much more appealing and clear.  Although Gladwell is not talking about powerpoints specifically it is a similar idea.   The small changes we made to our presentation in terms of color, formatting, and spacing made everything seem much ore professional.  The presentations we did this year really pushed us away from the way we have been taught to do them most of our high school life, and I am glad for that.  These small things truly do have the ability to make a big impact.  Gladwell talk about this factor in the realm of the media.  He digs deeper into why things became so popular so fast, and ho some commercials do so well, while others fail miserably.  It is all in the small tiny changes that we have the ability to make an impact on someone. There is one line he used that i really like in particular about companies, “Unless i remember what i tell I tell you, why would you ever change your behavior or buy my product or go to see my movie?”  I like this because it reminds me of how sometimes simple can better in anything, whether its a powerpoint or a commercial.  It just has to stick.  

So far I have enjoyed reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.  Last year I read Outliers by him, so I was familiar with his style of writing.  What Gladwell does so well is to dig deep into a large problem and find the tiniest thing that set in motion this change.  He calls them the three principles- one being contagiousness; two, the fact that little causes can have big effects, and three that change happens not gradually but at one dramatic moment. He calls this one dramatic moment when everything can change as the Tipping Point. It’s kind of like the boiling point, when everything starts to change very quickly. There were a few very interesting examples that Gladwell provided.  One of these examples was in New York City and how after the mid 70’s the next two decades experienced an extremely drastic decline in crime.  The police obviously took credit, along with many other groups, but Gladwell doesn’t buy these cliché answers.  Her rather points to the behaviors of criminals, and their change in behaviors. 

I also thought it was interesting that Gladwell points out it is tough for us to expect the idea of the Tipping Point.  We have in our minds a specific biological meaning of contagiousness, and don’t necessarily relate that to ideas- things like fashion trends. It’s hard to accept that huge changes can come from small events.  We like to think everything works proportionally, but often times that is not the case.  I am looking forward to reading more of Gladwell’s book!

This week we wrapped up the selling of our stickers.  We set a goal for each person in the team to sell at least five more stickers to add an extra sixty dollars to our profit.  Overall I think as a group we did a great job, because we saw other groups getting success selling but not finding the same success breaking even.  One of the great things about the stickers were that they cost us less than a dollar to make and that we were selling them for three dollars so we had a great margin on them.  On the storefront end this week we started working on our presentation.  I think we initially struggled with this because our vision was not clear.  After our initial presentation I think we know the way to go about staying with the 4A brand, but expanding on the original shop.  Although I have been to 4A before our trip there with our group was exciting.  We got to take some pictures, talk to Alua’s parents and really get another push for us to be excited about our project.  We also were able to get some pictures of the surrounding Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, for our presentation to show as our main competitors in the area.  I am both excited and nervous for the presentation coming up.  I think we have a lot of practice left to do this week, but I think we are a group that can pull it off well.   I think we just have to stay focused and make sure that we are very clear about why 4A is the best option for the investors.

 

Sandberg’s book has given me a lot to think about.  After finishing it I can say that although it was not one of my favorite books, it was one that is very relevant to and motivating.   Clearly there is a lot of changes that need to be made in the workplace to make it a more equal, but I think we are headed in the right direction.  There are other things that amaze me though about gender in this country.  I think it’s truly appalling that we have never had a female president, and that the majority of our representatives our male.  Some people say it’s because there have not been any women that they have seen on the ballot that they would want elected, but I think this has much to do with the society in which we are raised.   There are certain jobs and positions that I feel women are steered away from, or not encouraged to do.  While looking for a senior quote last week I found an interesting one that I think correlates with this idea.  Marilyn Monroe said “Well behaved Women rarely make history”.    I think it is interesting because in order to be seen a s a successful women I feel like you kind of have to have this rebellious attitude.  Women in power I think are not seen as the norm because of this culture I think we are used to.  Its as if to be a women in power you have to be an exception.  This bothers me because I think that many women in power are labeled as bossy or control freaks, when they are just the same as any male doing the same job. 

1/11/15

As the 200 dollar project entered it's last two weeks we began our final push for selling though the stickers.  We are hoping to really sell through the inventory that we have left. This began with first reaching out to any friends and family that were yet to buy the stickers. Then we looked into parents events occurring at the school this week. One of the ones we look at was for Thursday at the junior parent meeting. We got in touch with first Mr. Libenzon to give us permission who pointed is in the direction of Dean Meyers. Dean Meyers gave us the ok, so we were able to sell. We sold about ten stickers in the short time before the meeting.  It was interesting selling to parents because many of them were confused about the hashtag. While many of them were confused, they were happy to let us explain it to them, and they were eager to learn about what project we were working on in the Communication for Entrepreneurs Class.   We even sold three to Ms.Hollman, who now is very interested in Instagram after talking to us about it! We also were able to get out and sell at the Friday home girls basketball game where we found less success. But overall I think it was a pretty  good week in terms of selling, especially considering the completion from the other groups product in class. We saw other groups also having good success, including the wristband group who I think we got the most competition from. On the storefront end we just made the final touches for the packet to be ready for Mr. Gladstone.

 

This week I was able to finish Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In.  Upon completion of the book, my general feeling is that the book is definitely neither written nor organized very well, but I think the ideas are extremely valuable.  Over my winter vacation I was able to travel to San Francisco I was actually able to visit the Facebook headquarters.  We drove around the area a bit, and there were something that struck me that I am sure had to do with Sandberg.  In addition to there being a handicap spot there was a parking spot for expectant mothers.  I never thought about this, but once I saw it my only thought was why haven’t I seen this anywhere else? It is great that companies like Facebook are really pushing to become models in the realm of creating a more equal work environment for both men and women.  Sandberg has the right idea about it, that these goals are not possible with just women, women and men have to both work together for this common goal and that is where we will find the success. I think this is especially true when people are out down for being feminists.  Ive heard terms thrown around lightly within our school like “Femi-Nazi” and other derogatory terms.  When people say they are not feminists it bother me because so many people before us have fought for us to be here today, but we still have to continue the fight.  Jus the other day at the economic summit that we went to at Gillette I learned the harsh realization that some people still have very gender divided mindsets.  This happened when one boy came over while all the countries were trying to ally with each other and it was utter chaos, he pushed me to the side and told me to let the men handle this.  Clearly there are still teenagers that have the wrong mindset about gender.  I truly believe that as a school and as a society we have to work harder to not create these mindsets form an early age. 

3rd Blog Post

Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg

This week I continued my reading on Lean In.  I am getting close to the end, and I think I will probably end up finishing it on my plane ride during vacation.  The reading this week was probably not my favorite because although I am enjoying the way in which Sandberg explains the role of gender, I feel that it has started to get very repetitive. Sandberg is continuing to reestablish her stance on this point.  I do continue to like her points about us not being able to ignore gender and bias especially in the workplace.  To say one is not bias towards gender is probably impossible.  I think we all have some biases built in about gender because of the way our society has raised us, weather it be in America or any other country.  It makes me think a lot about how school reinforces gender roles.  Freshman year the girls in health and fitness had to learn self defense, while the boys were taught boxing.  In what way is this fair?  I never really thought about this, but Sandberg is making me question more and more many of the things even in our school that create gender divides.  I think in situations like I described it portrays women as the weaker sex.  This can translate into the workplace, because this is the type of mentality we have all grown up in. Small things like this need to be changed in order to reduce the gender divide.  The more and more we are aware of these things, the more and more emphasis we can put on changing the system.  This book, while getting a bit boring, is still pushing me more forward in seeing women not be labeled as women leaders but rather just leaders. That is one of the biggest things that bothers me, as it does Sandberg.  Why do you always hear female CEO or female president? This bothers me very much.

This was one of the busiest and most exciting weeks of our sticker project.  We had four very successful days.  Day 1 started with us being featured on Portraits of BHS, highlighting our story and it was a great way to get not only the stickers out there but along with our faces.  On Tuesday we had our flyer in homerooms to notify everyone we would be selling stickers on Thursday. Then on Wednesday we got a great Instagram collage posted By Kyle Williams form the Brookline Athletics Instagram account featuring many winter athletes with the sticker.  These were all great ways to get the word out there, not just once but three times to a whole new market of people who may have not even heard of the stickers before.  Thursday selling during both first and second lunch (in addition to E block) went well as we continued to make profit.  It was great that we weren’t just asking our friends anymore to buy them but rather new faces of people, which proved that we did something right t in the way were marketing. In addition the school store has begun to actually sell a couple of the stickers.   Looking ahead Alua had an idea for another product being temporary tattoos.  We are waiting back to hear a quote for those from the company she emailed.  It was exciting this week to finally have the work from the past couple of weeks pay off, because we lost some of that initial excitement we had originally with the stickers, but I think this week we were able to get back on track! On the storefront end we continued revising the different parts according to the comments we were provided with. We are hoping that we will be able to successfully pitch this in a presentation when the time comes to do so in January!