• Maven Trap: Look after Mavens with exclusivity, higher-quality and outstanding service. Promotes trusted word-of-mouth.
• 80/20 Rule: Roughly 80% of the “work” is done by 20% of the participants (e.g. 20% of people commit 80% of crime).
• Strength of Weak Ties: Paradox that suggests lesser acquaintances are a better source of social power than close friends due to quantity (can only have so many close relationships) and diversity (close friends likely to mingle in your circles).
• Six Degrees of Separation: Coined from a 1967 “small world” mail forwarding experiment highlighting the power of Connectors.
• Adoption Lifecycle: Innovators (different, trendsetters, activists, passionate), Early Adopters (risk takers), Early/Late Majority (low risk, conformity), Laggards (late adopters). Early Adopters translate innovation into language for the mainstream (safe/usable).

Stickiness Factor

• Humans make approximations between cause and effect (e.g. how tall would a piece of paper be if you folded it 50 times?), but epidemics are disproportionate (answer: it would almost reach the sun!).
• Changes don’t have to be big to cause stickiness. A small change in the flu virus caused the 1918 Flu Pandemic killing 3–5% (50–100 million) of the world’s population!
• Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Average number of objects held in working memory (e.g. basis for telephone numbers).
• The driving force for preschoolers is understanding, predictability and repetition (e.g. stories) — not novelty (as with older kids). Promotes affirmation and self-worth.

Power of Context

• Bystander Effect: Probability of individuals helping a victim is inversely proportionate to the number of bystanders (everybody assumes somebody else will help, assume there’s a good reason why nobody is helping).
• Dunbar’s Number (Rule of 150): The maximum genuine social relationships (know everyone, store information in others/as a collective, achieve goals informally, peer pressure) for humans.
• Broken Windows Theory: Preventing small crime (e.g. graffiti) creates an atmosphere of order, thereby preventing more serious crimes.
• Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency to overestimate character traits rather than situation and context. Simplistic explanations that provide security and meaning. Most people have a consistent predictable character because they are very good at controlling their environment…but what happens during volatility (e.g. riot, war)?
• Children are better off in a good neighbourhood with a troubled family than vice-versa. Lateral peers play a bigger role in shaping personality and intelligence than parents (e.g. language).
• Highly publicised violence (e.g. suicides, shootings) give others “permission” to do the same and can create a Tipping Point. Link between type of violence and increased incidents of a very similar nature.

Interesting Tidbits

• HIV: World War II PCP epidemic in Danzig — a possible early HIV strain.
• Gaëtan Dugas: The North American “Patient Zero” of AIDS — a Canadian flight attendant with around 2,500 sexual partners.
• Rumours: Are simply contagious social messages — often distorted to gravitate towards the subject’s own life in a manner consistent with their culture and emotions (in an attempt to create meaning).
• Smokers: Strong ties with depression, risk, sexual drive, misconduct and honesty (indifference to other’s opinions). Treat smokers for depression. Addiction has a Tipping Point based off genetic tolerance.
• Age of Isolation: As digital communication (e.g. email) escalates and overwhelms, it decreases in value and people build up immunities to cope — and paradoxically rely more on primitive (e.g. word of mouth) communication for trusted advice (e.g. restaurants).
• Fax Effect (Law of Plentitude): Abundance increases a network’s value (e.g. each new fax machine increases the usefulness of all others — a single fax machine is useless), which is the opposite to a traditional economy (where scarcity equals value). A radical notion.
• Airwalk: Popular 90s shoe brand, cheesy ads.
• Words (I didn’t know): Gestalt (whole more than the sum of its parts), ideation (process of creating new ideas), choicest (act of choosing…really?), ohmigod (not a real word), Runyonesque (reference to Damon Runyon, an American newspaperman), chippers (casual “users” who can stop with little-to-no withdrawals e.g. smoking, coffee).
• Humans store information in other people (e.g. couples) and a loss of the person can be as detrimental as losing part of one’s own mind. Depressing.

Pseudo Quotes

“All of these things are expressions of the peculiarities of the human mind and heart, a refutation of the notion that the way we function and communicate and process information is straightforward and transparent. It is not. It is messy and opaque.”

“It’s not a gesture. It’s a speech.” (re: suicide)

“The paradox of the epidemic is that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.”

“Kids smoke because they’re cool, not cool because they smoke.”

Conclusion

Reaching Tipping Point and going viral is largely a reactive — not proactive — process.

Raise kids in a good neighbourhood. Re-read stories to preschoolers. Beat smoking by targeting depression. Restrict organisations to under 150 people. Research trends from innovators to be at market when if/it goes mainstream. Look after early adopters who use your product/service. Push through connectors (e.g. celebrities, leaders). Tackle large difficult problems at the simplest origins for a downstream effect. Word of mouth is crucial for success. Don’t read this book.