New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur Simon Sinek said, “I built my entire brand with zero marketing budget and no public relations, and, at the time, no social media.” 

You have probably heard of Sinek and know what an iconic brand he has built. How did he do it? By leveraging the Law of Diffusion of Innovations. Developed by E.M. Rogers in 1962, the Law of Diffusion of Innovations explains how new ideas, products, or practices spread through a social system over time, following a bell curve pattern categorized into five adopter groups: Innovators (2.5%), Early Adopters (13.5%), the Early Majority (34%), the Late Majority (34%), and Laggards (16%). Adoption moves from risk-takers to the pragmatic mainstream and finally to skeptics.

When growing his business, Sinek concentrated on the Early Adopters. He did not want to convince people to hire him. If someone wasn’t an early adopter and wasn’t excited about his vision, he walked away – even when he needed the money. 

There is a great story in this video about Sinek being hired to help a company build a leadership program for their millennial staff. The way he did it was brilliant. He designed it to attract Early Adopters, held a workshop that got them excited, and then asked for volunteers to help build out the program. Fifty people (half of the room) raised their hands. These early adopters then spread their excitment about the upcoming program and created demand within the organization.

The way he did it got buy-in and ensured the program would be successful. This is a stark contrast to the way this would generally happen in large organizations where they would build the program first and then beg or mandate people to attend. Many of these types of projects fail. 

From the YouTube video description:

To be innovative, we can’t look to what others have done. The whole idea of blazing a path is that there was no path there before.

Simon shares the mindset that changed the way he thinks about creating change within organizations—the Law of Diffusion of Innovation.

Photo by Skye Studios on Unsplash