Home | About | Using the Toolkit | All Tools | Get Involved

What is a tipping point?

A tipping point occurs when a change in a system becomes self-reinforcing, building momentum towards widespread, and often irreversible, impacts.

Imagine rolling a ball to the top of a hill. As you push the ball you are facing resistance. Gravity is pushing against you, there might be rocks in your way, and your arms are getting tired. If you let go before the top, the ball will fall back to where you started from. We sometimes see this with attempts to introduce new behaviours or policies. They cause a brief shift, but the system soon returns back to the way it was before. Once the ball has passed the top of the hill however, that resistance becomes momentum. Now releasing the ball will lead to a new destination, and one from which there is no quick or easy return.

This moment at the top is the tipping point, and it is a recognised and studied feature of complex systems. It is the moment where the conditions for the new system state have become significant enough to mean that the changes are now self-reinforcing, and even though the new system state has not yet been reached, it has become largely unavoidable, and often irreversible.

In this story, the ball is the system, and each side of the hill represents the state of the system. Instead of a simple, linear journey from one state to the other, the system requires significant effort to shift, but once the tipping point is reached then positive feedback (in this case, gravity) will carry it further.

The characteristics of a tipping point include:

1. A movement from one system state to another - a meaningful and significant change
2. Positive feedback - self-reinforcing reactions that create momentum to amplify the change
3. Non-linearity - small changes can have big impacts, and change can happen very quickly compared to the usual speed of progress
4. Irreversibility - the change can not be easily undone (although this is sometimes possible over a longer period of time), even if the system changes again it cannot return to the exact same state it was in before

You can explore and play with these characteristics in more detail in the Toolkit.

<aside> ✅

Key points to consider:

• The tipping point is not the end of the story, but marks a shift where the change becomes self-perpetuating (the ball will keep rolling even when you stop pushing)
• It is also not the start of the story, and what happens before the Tipping Point is just as important as the moment of tipping (the process of getting the ball to the top of the hill)
• Not every change is a Tipping Point - common qualities include abrupt, self-reinforcing, and irreversible change </aside>

Why are tipping points useful?

This way of thinking can help us understand systems change as a non-linear process, in which it can appear as though very little progress is being made, before a seemingly rapid and sudden transformation. In reality, the work that goes into creating the enabling conditions for change is just as important as the moment of tipping.

<aside> 🔑

If we want to change a system we need to think like a system. If we try to trigger a change - for example a new behaviour, or a new policy - without first understanding what is required for that change to take root, then we risk having limited impact, or even making things worse.

</aside>

What is a positive tipping point?

The idea of tipping points is a neutral one - they are not necessarily good or bad, they just are. But as soon as we start thinking about positive tipping points, we are making judgements about what has happened, what is happening, or what might happen.

We may consider some tipping points to be obviously positive or negative, although not everyone would agree. Between those extremes, however, there is a huge grey area where tipping points could be partly positive and partly negative, depending on who is making the judgement.