I love teaching the concept of the Tipping Point, or the Social Epidemic Curve to my students.

It's great to see the "Ah ha" moment it almost always produces.

I learned the concept from Brian Uzzi at the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Il.

Mary Cemenski is the teacher of Marketing at Mankato West High School. Recently she invited me in to speak about entrepreneurship. I did a week on writing a "Business Plan for the Ghostbusters." It's a fun curriculum, and allows the students to explore all the parts of the planning process without the confines of reality.

Here's how I introduced the concept of the Tipping Point to the kids.

Little Jimmy is a five year old boy, who lives with his Mom. He doesn't go to day care, play sports, or gets a chance to interact with local kids his age. His Mom loves to travel, and takes Jimmy everywhere.

One day, when visiting his cousins far away, Jimmy is exposed to the Chicken Pox.

Jimmy brings the Chicken Pox home, but because he doesn't see many people, he doesn't spread the disease. He shows symptoms, and his Mom let's in run its course, and the illness doesn't spread.

Now suppose this story ended a bit differently. Little Jessica form next door sees Jimmy coming home from his trip. She runs over to see where he was, and if he had anything cool to show her. Jessica is like this - she doesn't travel much, or try new stuff herself, but she loves hearing about what other kids are doing.

She catches the Chicken Pox, and transmits to the other kids in her day care class. Those kids transmit it to their T-Ball leagues, Dance Classes and other social networks. Before you know it, every kid seems to have the Chicken Pox.

So the question is - how is your business finding the Jimmies, encouraging the Jessica’s, and selling to the rest of the class?

Marketing can be targeted - often at early adopters (think press release in Wired magazine) - encourage brokers (Bose including information cards with their noise cancelling headphones), or preparing the masses (traditional advertising.)

Invariably, students come up with great examples. From Ipods to clothing, they know this is how the world works.

This entry was posted by Mike Nolan, on Saturday, February 9, 2008. You can leave your response.