The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street in the Last Year or So

5. Oh, What's the Tipping Point of It All?

Though Jeff Kagan's fame may be bumping up against resistance levels, other Wall Street phenomena are poised to break out.

And we've got the charts to prove it.

First up: The chief restructuring officer. As we pointed out a year ago in a study of various executives with the word "chief" on their business cards, once-fashionable job titles such as "chief knowledge officer" and "chief privacy officer" appear to be passing fads.

On the other hand, we noticed, the hard-times harbinger known as the "chief restructuring officer" appeared to be on the upswing. So one year later, how did the CRO fare?

Just as we thought. Mentions of a chief restructuring officer in 2003 press releases more than doubled from official statements issued the prior year.

Once we verified that trend, it was on to another one: the "tipping point," the expression -- popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point -- that's competing with "perfect storm" as the most alarmingly overused business-writing metaphor of 2003.

Hail to the Chief Restructuring Officer

Source: Factiva *Figure for 2003 is as of Dec. 29, 2003

Back in June, we forecast that people searching for an impressive-sounding synonym for "a big change" would increasingly choose "tipping point," vaulting that term well ahead of the old standby "inflection point" and even threatening the perennial champion "paradigm shift."

A Painful Inflection

Source: Factiva * 2003 figures are as of Dec. 29, 2003 ** articles mentioning "tipping point" but not Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point

Again, the research lab was correct. Non-Malcolm Gladwell-related uses of "tipping point" more than tripled from 2002 to 2003, making the term 89% as popular as "paradigm shift."

The big surprise, however, was that "inflection point" still has a lot of upside. Usage grew 52% over 2002, well ahead of the 14% growth we predicted in June, which indicates that the urge to write about big changes is, um, inflectious.