Malcolm Gladwell’s “Connectors”: People Who Spread Ideas

Malcolm Gladwell’s “Connectors”: People Who Spread Ideas

Who are Malcolm Gladwell’s connectors? How are they crucial to the spread of ideas and important for business? Connectors are people who seem to know everyone. You can find Connectors in every walk of life. Connectors are sociable, gregarious, and are naturally skilled at making — and keeping in contact with — friends and acquaintances. The term comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. We’ll cover the role of Tipping Point‘s connectors in business and why they’re crucial to the spread of ideas, services, and products.

Social Channel Capacity: 150 Real Relationships Is Your Max

Social Channel Capacity: 150 Real Relationships Is Your Max

What does “channel capacity” mean? How much information is the brain able to store? What does this mean about the number of relationships we’re able to maintain? Channel capacity is a term in cognitive psychology that says humans have limited space in our brains for certain kinds of information: by and large, we can only remember six or seven things — whether objects, numbers, categories, or sounds — before we get overwhelmed and start to lose track. Similarly, social channel capacity states that we have a limited emotional capacity. We can only maintain deep relationships with a limited number of

Sticky Ideas: Make Your Message Personal + Practical

Sticky Ideas: Make Your Message Personal + Practical

What are “sticky” ideas? How can you make ideas sticky, so they’re adopted by thousands, or even millions, of people? Sticky ideas are ideas that make an impact and stand out from the white noise of all the other ideas we come across in a day. In marketing, the stickier the idea, the more likely it is to sell a product or service. We’ll cover the principles of sticky ideas and look at some powerful “sticky idea” examples.

Environmental Context: Subtle Cues Change Your Behavior

Environmental Context: Subtle Cues Change Your Behavior

How does our environmental context, the changes in our setting, affect our behavior? Can subtle changes in our environments determine whether or not an idea or product catches on? We’ll cover the science behind how your environmental context affects your behavior and look at a surprising example of the ways subtle changes in our environmental context and affect you.

3 Powerful Tipping Point Examples

3 Powerful Tipping Point Examples

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explains how social epidemics — spreading ideas, messages, behaviors, and products — function like viruses, growing gradually until they reach a critical mass (the tipping point) and explode. What are some good tipping-point examples? We’ll look at two powerful tipping-point examples from Gladwell’s book and discuss how epidemics occur in both the medical and social worlds.

Syphilis Epidemic: How Small Changes Become Disasters

Syphilis Epidemic: How Small Changes Become Disasters

In the mid-1990s, a syphilis epidemic exploded in Baltimore. The disease had been present in the city previously, but the confluence of a few, relatively minor factors created a tipping point; all three rules of epidemics were at work.  What are the three rules of epidemics? How do these rules transcend medical epidemics and apply to the spread of ideas? Learn how the lessons from Baltimore’s syphilis epidemic apply to your life–small factors can make a big difference.

Fundamental Attribution Error: You’re Blaming the Wrong Thing

Fundamental Attribution Error: You’re Blaming the Wrong Thing

What is the fundamental attribution error? Do you make it? How is it related to the power of social context? The Fundamental Attribution Error is a psychological term for humans’ tendency to overestimate the importance of fundamental personality traits in explaining people’s behaviors, and underestimate the role of context. In other words, when we see someone behave a certain way, we’re more likely to assume it’s a fundamental personality trait, rather than the influence of temporary context. We’ll cover the fundamental attribution error and look at examples of the fundamental attribution error, or fundamental attribution bias.