February’s issue of Fast Company magazine contains a fascinating article by Clive Thompson, titled Is the Tipping Point Toast? His conclusion: not only is it toast; it’s stale toast. But I beg to differ.

The article profiles Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University on sabbatical at Yahoo! Watts is the kind of solid researcher you trust. Still in his thirties, he has a publication list as long as my arm. The Fast Company article is getting a lot of play in the blogosphere. So, what’s going on, and why do I care?

First, I care because the article questions the entire utility of finding and working through opinion leaders. We, and many of the influencers we profile in our book, Influencer, use opinion-leader strategies extensively. Are we fooling ourselves about their impact?

I think Watts’ conclusions are driven by the kinds of innovations or products he studies.

Much of Watts’ research focuses on “viral marketing” and suggests that the money spent on finding opinion leaders is wasted. (see his article, Viral Marketing for the Real World). He shows it’s often the number of adopters and the quality of the product—not the characteristics of these adopters—which determine how quickly a product spreads through a society.
 
But wait a minute. Watts’ research—at least the research cited in Fast Company and his piece on viral marketing—focuses on the kinds of innovations that require very little investment and entail very few risks (i.e., getting people to download your tunes, watch your movies, or read your banner ads.) He's not asking people to change entrenched habits or take huge risks.

When you decide which tune to download, you might take anyone’s advice. But, when you decide which cancer treatment to try, you’re more likely to seek out a person you trust. I believe Watts is right when the decisions are relatively unimportant, but I think opinion leaders are incredibly important when it comes to high-risk or high-cost decisions.

All of us working in the diffusion of innovation field build off of Everett Rogers’ seminal ideas. If you were to seek out one book on the subject, make it his book, Diffusion of Innovations. Below is a brief summary of Rogers' concepts. I’ve added my comments in an attempt to put Watts’ work into Rogers’ context.

1. Innovations possess certain characteristics (i.e., relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability) which, as perceived by adopters, determine the ultimate rate and pattern of adoption;
   
   My comments: Duncan Watts' data shows that relative advantage and compatibility are often more important than any other factor. If your product stinks, then using opinion leaders won't help. Sounds sensible to me.
    
2. Some potential adopters are more innovative than others, and can be identified as such by their personal characteristics ("cosmopolitanism," level of education, etc.);
   
   My comments: Duncan Watts thinks some marketing gurus are spending too much time and energy trying to find these people. I don't think there's a simple answer to this question. The answer depends on all of the other factors in this list of variables.
   
   
3. The adoption decision unfolds in a series of stages (flowing from knowledge of the innovation through persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation) and adopters are predisposed towards different kinds of influence (e.g., mass market communication versus word-of-mouth) at different stages;
   
   My comments: Duncan Watts is using products that are "impulse buys" not "tough buys". I think his choice of products minimizes the importance of several of the phases in the adoption process. Watts' people are deciding whether to forward an email—not the kind of decision that would motivate you to seek out the best advice.
   
   
4. The actions of certain kinds of individuals (opinion leaders and change agents) can accelerate adoption, especially when potential adopters view such individuals as being similar to themselves;
   
   My comments: Notice that being an opinion leader in one area won't make you an opinion leader in all areas. I think part of what concerns Watts about how marketers use the term "opinion leader" is that they assume these "opinion leaders" are looked to for all decisions.
   
   
5. The diffusion process usually starts out slowly among pioneering adopters, reaches "take-off" as a growing community of adopters is established and the effects of peer influence kick-in, and levels-off as the population of potential adopters becomes exhausted, thus leading to an "S-shaped" cumulative adoption curve.
   
   My comments: Watts’ own research--which I love--shows these same curves. His model for Big Seed Marketing shows that, with many kinds of products, it doesn’t matter who these adopters are—as long as you get a critical mass of them.

I think the Fast Company article is an important one--but one that may cause people to throw out the baby with the bath water. I prefer to look at Watts' research as focusing on the margin between a focused opinion-leader strategy and a mass-marketing strategy. He's looking for when one approach or another is appropriate--and I think the answer is, “it depends on the nature of the product, the spot you are on the diffusion curve, and the homogeneity of the society--as well as a few other things.”
 
I’m curious how others interpret Watts’ research.