What on earth do former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Grammy Award-winning hip-hop band The Roots have in common? Answer: they both like to use the phrase ‘tipping point’. It’s the title of a 2004 album by The Roots (the follow-up was Game Theory so, for rappers, they aim high). The combative Mr Rumsfeld used it to explain just what the Iraq war had not yet reached. On these and many, many other lips, ‘tipping point’ has passed its own tipping point, and business has leapt aboard the wagon.
A quick dance around the web reveals the term - usually prefaced by “Have we reached the …” - applied to the Iraq war, opinion on the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, online media, oil, various proprietary brands of software, online advertising, online video and autism. It also shows that a surprising number of businesses have hijacked it as a trading name, including advertising agencies, marketing agencies, training companies and, bizarrely, an IT security business.
