The WSJ has an article on Sun’s victory against MSFT today that explicitly mentions “tipping”, the concept Malcolm Gladwell made popular in his book The Tipping Point:
Sun Microsystems Inc. won a huge victory Monday when a federal judge ordered archrival Microsoft Corp. to distribute Sun’s Java programming language while a private antitrust suit is pending. Sun earlier in December told Judge J. Frederick Motz that the market for software capable of supporting mobile Internet and other Web-based services was in danger of “tipping” toward Microsoft’s product, the .NET Framework.
Of course, “Tipping Point” is heading toward common usage. (Google News has 64 this month.)
However, I found the WSJ article interesting because it’s rare for such large economic value to be determined based on a popularization of theory.
Or, as Keynes said:
“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct theory. Madman in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
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