Mavens and Salesmen, The Arts of Gathering Knowledge and Harnessing Persuasion

The word Maven comes from the Yiddish, and it means one who accumulates knowledge. These are people who keep the marketplace honest since are those who know a lot about that particular product, and comunicate it to other potential customers, making hard for the sellers to cheat. They aren't passive collectors of information, what is really striking of the mavens is that once they figure out how to get taht deal, they want to tell you about it too.

A maven is not a persuader, but a provider of information. The salesman, however, it is. It masters persuasion. Persuasion often works in ways that we do not appreciate, non-verbal cues, for instance, are crucial in all kinds of communication, more important perhaps than verbal cues: it is not that smiles and nods are subliminal messages; they are straightforward and on the surface, although subtle. By using persuasion, little things can make as much of a difference as big things.

Per tant, The Law of the Few, la primera de les lleis de l'expansió d'una epidèmia (una moda, una tendència, un estil, una manera de fer, un hàbit social, un costum...) ens diu que l'expansió té a veure amb aquells pocs que ténen aquestes característiques, una d'elles o - potser preferiblement - una combinació de les 3:

• Connector (Masters the art of Weak Tie)
• Maven (A good Knowledge gatherer)
• Salesman (Harnesses the art of Persuation)

I també ens diu que les epidèmies es poden propagar, aprenent i fent servir aquestes arts.