Regroup Thinking
Scrap all that stuff that I just said last entry, well not all the stuff. We just had a group disccusion about the Group Think, the article. I realize that after our discussion, my conclusions about the article were not relevant. We came up with “Does the group ultimately bring more success than one of its unit?” Success, in this article, is defined as innovation. Gladwell uses the example of SNL to show the benefits of working in a group. Gladwell divided his article into three different sections. His first section is written in journalistic style describing the social network of SNL. He uses direct quotes from people. In the intro, he rants about people and experiences that seem to be irrevelant at first to the rest of the article, but actually could be an inside joke. The first section also includes the dynamics of the SNL group and how tightly knit they are.
The second section begins to parse group thinking and links the ideas of group thinking to German philosophy. Gladwell writes in an academic scholarly tone. Unlike the first section, Gladwell takes direct quotes from books, not people. He gives different examples of group thinking that were successful and analyzes the group, explaining the why there were so successful. These groups were succesful because in a competitve atmosphere, group members were motivated to come up with new ideas and felt comfortable sharing these ideas. The competitivesness and desire to better other member’s ideas also contributes to greater individual and group productivity.
The next section, the third section, brings the reader back to the SNL example. Gladwell furthur proves the success of group thinking. He describes how inside jokes attracts outsiders into the group. This process contributes to the evolution of ideas into a revolution as the group increases in number.
-The Deformed Rabbits
