chp 6 discussion questions

Chapter 6 discusses and is entitled "rumors, sneakers, and translation". It uses the examples of the popularity of airwalks in the early 1990's, what tipped the airwalks into such a success (and ultimately its failure). The obvious first step was to go into the diffussion model, which is a way of looking at how an innovation moves through a population. There are 2 kinds of people in the early stages of a mass movement, the innovators and the early majority. The innovators are the people in California who first started wearing airwalks. these were the skaters and trendsetters that may have strived to find something new and different (its not quite new and different if those around you are trying to be new and different as well, but regardless they wanted to set themselves apart from the norm.) However, its interesting to look at what happened to turn this shoe companies somewhat loyal fanbase into a popular shoe worn across america and the world. The early majority are the types of people who tweak what made it cool to make it popular. They act as a buffer to make it alright for the sheep-like people to feel its okay to wear. However, in the book, Gladwell describes these two kinds of people as incompatible. Looking back in the book can help explain what links these two necessary types of people together to create an epedemic. The link comes from the law of the few, some extraordinary people (connectors, mavens, and salesman) that are essential in the translation process. they are the people that stand out from both groups and can put in progress the motion of events that start an epidemic.