How Ideas Grow

Because network effects are an exponential function, it can feel as if not much is happening for a really long time even though you’re on the right path.

So how can we get people to accept a new idea? Show how it is a natural extension of the things they already believe. Sure, evidence also helps, but no amount of evidence will make someone believe a story they’re skeptical of.

Choose social scenes that reward narratives with high intrinsic value.

Let’s say you buy that narratives have network effects. What can we do about it? How can we use this knowledge to help us on the buy side (having more useful narratives in our heads driving our actions) and on the sell side (making our narratives and ideas spread and gain network effects of their own)?

When you believe something about the world and act accordingly, there are two forms of value you can get. One is the sort of “social value” that comes with a shared narrative. But there is also another sort of value that doesn’t care whether anyone shares the narrative or not: It makes sense to call it “intrinsic value.”

This is the fundamental basis of narrative network effects: Without shared narratives, we can’t connect. And every time a narrative gets used, it’s reinforced and is that much more likely to be useful again in the future.

If we want to accomplish our goals, we need thenarratives driving our actions to be accurate and useful. We also need other people to buy the narratives we believe in if we want to attract customers, investors, employees, or any other kind of partner. So it’s worth understanding where they come from and how they grow.

Every product we buy, every job we take, every relationship we have, and all the decisions we make are based on narratives—stories that explain how the world works and what’s going on in it. The narratives we believe determine our actions.