The Law of the Few…

April 10, 2008 | 9:00 AM

So what happens when we start looking at our networks for Malcolm Gladwell’s three personalities?

In The Tipping Point, Gladwell offers three uniquely important types of people in the spread of ideas.  They comprise the Law of the Few. “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social skills” (Wikipedia):

• Connectors are the people who “link us up with the world … people with a special gift for bringing the world together.”
• Salesmen are “persuaders”, charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, that makes others want to agree with them.
• Mavens are “information specialists”, or “people we rely upon to connect us with new information.”

Gladwell’s contention is that these three personalities are critical in sparking ideas- taking them from nothing to something almost overnight.  What I’m thinking is that if we are all innately connected to each other via Britt’s Congruence Theory, then we can start looking for these connectors, salesmen, and mavens with the explicit goal to spread our ideas.

If a movement starts by understanding our connectedness, then it spreads when we identify those who disseminate ideas, or memes, to others across the world and start telling them our ideas.

Posted in Business, Christianity, Human Dignity Series, Life, Media