Seek Out Interest, Not Influence: While there has been much discussion about Influentials in recent years, the idea itself is a red herring. As attractive as these magical people are in theory, the empirical research—as well as common sense—shows them not to exist in any significant way.
If we want our ideas to spread, we’re much better off seeking out people who will be interested in it than chasing phantom “Influentials.”
Build Inside Before You Build Out: One of the most common mistakes that people make when trying to spread a disruptive idea is to try to spread it far and wide. This is almost always a mistake, because it makes it less likely that you will ever build up the density you need to influence those with higher resistance thresholds.
The strength of a community, after all, is not defined by how many people are connected to an idea, but how those people are connected to each other. Businesses as diverse as Harley Davidson and eBay thrive because of the bonds they have forged not only to the brand, but among consumers themselves.
Connect To Higher Threshold Groups: We tend to think about communities as isolated and distinct groups, but that’s not really the case. In the Orange Revolution in Ukraine the disruption started at universities and students flocked to build tent cities in protest. If the movement had stopped there, it would have fizzled out just as #Occupy did.
SPONSOR CONTENT
The best one-liner of all time
Promoted by Holiday Inn Express
Change only became truly possible when groups with higher resistance thresholds joined in (the same was true in the Arab Spring and the recent unrest in Turkey). Revolution these days looks more like The Good Wife than Homeland. It’s not the “special people”, but everybody else that transforms a niche idea into a powerful movement.
It’s Not The Nodes, It’s The Network
All too often, disruption is portrayed as a mysterious process that requires almost superhuman abilities. We look to people like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk to lead us or, alternatively, seek out softheaded theories of influence to explain it.
Make no mistake—it’s not the nodes, but the network that creates disruption—and there are natural laws that govern the connections and interdependencies that underlie it. By understanding these laws—and the science behind them—we can manage organizations more effectively and drive disruption, rather than fall victim to it.
As digital technology makes disruption not only more important, but more common as well, it’s time that the business community learns what science already knows—the way things connect determines how they will behave.
AI
