In Fast Company a while back there was an excellent article entitled "Is the Tipping Point Toast?” by Clive Thompson. I’d strongly recommend that marketing executives and anyone else interested in the idea of unlearning read it.
What I like about the article is that it challenges conventional wisdom and provides further evidence that common sense can often be misleading. In short, the article – which is based on the research of Duncan Watts – challenges Malcolm Gladwell’s tantalyzing idea that “mavens” and “influentials” are often the key to getting ideas or products to reach the “tipping point.”
Alas, marketing is not that simple and unless a great many marketing professionals “unlearn” their over-reliance on trying to “influence the influencers” they could end up wasting a great deal of time and money.
