We are all “selling”. At the heart of us all we would at least like others to see what we see. True power is being truly heard. This may be selling a product. Or it may be changing the world of food or school – whatever. True power is when you and your idea finds dominance.

Until recently, we had to use immense resources to pull this off. After all this was what marketing and politics was all about – getting hold of vast sums of money to push out our POV.

Only the big could play – until now.

Please excuse the diagram – but I know of no other way of showing this right now. This comes from some work I am doing with a client who has a service that is of interest to researchers. We built this model of the “Field” of a University as it pertains to how we might influence the Profs.

Simply put, if you want to have a lot of Profs use your service, you have to start not with the Formal University and least of all with the most tenacious gatekeeper IT. You are best to find the Big Man on Campus – the most influential Prof with the Lab that all look up to. If she likes what you have, she can find her own money to buy it. Being a “star” she does not need the university as lesser Profs might. If  she buys and uses and likes it, then the lesser stars join. The laws of Adoption come into play.

Not only does the BMOC influence her colleagues in her university but because she is a true star, she carries weight in other universities. She may also have formal links in that she may be collaborating with another Lab or Labs. She is a vector for “infection”.

If you have a service that can also serve the small, then you can increase your power by finding the Rising Star. This junior prof has no money. He is new but brilliant. He too wishes to rise to be a dominant player in the field. If you can have a close to free version of your service, he can use this to rise. Then all the rest have to follow as well.

It is better if you then can find local allies. In every system you will have the cops and you will have the social workers. The cops are usually IT or HR in organizations. The nice people in Universities are the Libraries. They are usually genuinely interested in learning and in serving and tend not to be tied to any Right Way. My bet is that every field has these brakes or accelerators.

Finally, to get the big boost, it is likely that you will find regulators or agencies who may find that your service serves them too. With their support, you can tip the system.

I don’t think that this model is confined to Universities. I think that it is Fractal.

I think that all fields have the same deep structure and so are open to this type of approach. In every field there is a dominance hierarchy. There is an external boundary. The job in every field is to get to the centre and to hold the dominant role. This is true in music, in art, math, banking in everything.

There are Stars at the centre, there are gatekeepers, there are Rising Stars, there are infection vectors, there are sponsors, there are pitfalls. All fields have this kind of structure. If we said that the university model was classical piano – it would be the same. If we said it was war doctrine, it would be the same. Hey it is the same for Social Media.

So why is this helpful to you? Because this approach is a true game changer. You don’t have to have vast resources to capture the interest of a field. You do have to have something that is authentically good. But if you have this, then we can use this model to move up the adoption curve with few resources. In fact once you get momentum, the system will do nearly all the work for you.

If I am correct, then this model is a simple map of any field and so enables anyone who wishes to rise or influence any field, to plot a strategy.

This then brings us back to my first post. If this is the map, then we also know how best to harness our social power to have the best journey.

Do we know enough now for you to have the optimal team set up in the optimal way to have the power to get influence on the field that matters to you?

I think we do – but what about you?