Laserlike

“Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen… Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone–both to the novice and the experienced physicist.”   -Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics

The Tipping Point.

Malcolm Gladwell offers an analysis of sociological phenomenon in The Tipping Point to help us understand how to identify “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”  A key tenet of his argument is that a small group of hyper influential people called “connectors” help launch exponential growth by bringing the world together.  This idea is a deeply held belief amongst many product and marketing executives, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists.  It’s a compelling story.  Unfortunately, it’s dead wrong.

Feynman explained that quantum mechanics is so counterintuitive that it’s hard to grasp for anyone, even Feynman.  You must have a deep appreciation for mathematics and follow the data in order to really understand what is going on.  The same thing is increasingly true in developing consumer products, particularly consumer web properties.

Fast Company had an extensive interview with Duncan Watts of Yahoo! Research, which I highly recommend.  Watts has done a number of experiments including an updated take on Stanley Milgram’s 1967 Six Degrees of Separation study.  But instead of having 160 people send physical mail, Watts’ experiment involved 61,000 people using email.  Like Milgram he found that, on average, messages passed through approximately six people.  But he also found that connectors had very little to do with the functioning of the system.  He also ran a Sims-like experiment where he found that “the average Joe” was as likely to be the source of the propagation of exponential growth as “connectors.”

“Watts thinks trends are more like forest fires: There are thousands a year, but only a few become roaring monsters. That’s because in those rare situations, the landscape was ripe: sparse rain, dry woods, badly equipped fire departments. If these conditions exist, any old match will do. ‘And nobody,’ Watts says wryly, ‘will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire.’”

Enter Joe the Plumber.

After working on numerous consumer web products and reviewing the data of hundreds of consumer web companies in my current role, I have come to appreciate Watts’ forest fire metaphor.  Most entrepreneurs are sure that they have the right idea and continue doing the same thing, sometimes for years, in the hope of hitting a tipping point.  ”Now that we have a product, we are raising capital for marketing,” is a refrain that I hear far too often.

Most of today’s massive consumer web properties experienced exponential growth fairly shortly after launch.  A few thousand users over a few months is probably sufficient to find out it you have hit a nerve.  So forget the connectors.  Any average Joe will do once you find some dry timber.