11 Nov How to get ideas to stick!
When we think about things catching on, we see it around us in the world all the time. There are products like greek yogurt or kale, services like Uber or Square, apps like Snapchat, ideas like Democracy, behaviors like quitting smoking or voting. Catchphrases, fashion styles and the likes. We can think about these items as culture or cultural tastes. And a number of years ago, a scientist wrote a book called The Selfish Gene, where he called these ideas memes. Just like genes compete for people, genes evolve over time, based on us, memes are cultural units that compete in the world around us. They evolve over time, competing to see what’s going to be more or less successful. And when we think about this, when we think about social epidemics or things catching on, well what does that really mean? It’s a case where a product, an idea, or a behavior diffuses through a population. We can almost think it like spreading a virus. Starting with a small set of people and moving to, in fact, a broader set. This thing catches on or is contagious at its core.
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