spreading

A couple of conversations on Twitter had me dreaming up a great Twitter experiment.

1. Organize two very large groups on Twitter and make sure they have very few common links at the outset.
2. Now give one group red shirts and other one blue shirts. Don’t tell the red shirts that the blue shirts exist, or v.v.
3. Then after a while, get some red shirts to follow blue shirts and v.v. – but don’t mention the shirts. You are the only person in the know!
4. Check how many red shirt people start to wear blue shirts, and v.v.

• Network theory suggests that we mimic what other people do, without realizing we are doing it. So red shirt wearers are likely to wear red shirts more and more often. As are blue shirt wearers.

• When we introduce red shirt wearers to blue shirt wearers, they will wear each others’ colors without thinking.

• Network theory also tells us that we are affected by what our friends’ friends do. We don’t need to know our friends’ friend either!

• So if some red shirts start talking to people who wear blue shirts, other red shirts might start wearing blue shirts.

It is fairly alarming that we are so easy to influence. But there are two sides to the coin. It not three!

• We influence back. if you want a tidy room, make it tidy! People who come in will be tidier than if their first look is an untidy room.

• We also have many influences competing for our attention.

I think the key is that we have to budget for competition. How much work do we have to do to win? And what will we do if we come second? Toby Moores, the CEO of Sleepy Dog, budgets one successful commercial idea out of 200. How well do we understand the processes of creativity, innovation and group influence? How can we give kids experience of the give-and-take of creativity, innovation and group decision making?

Any experiments for that?