A recently completed
two year study from Asst. Prof. Damon Centola of the MIT Sloan School of Management has shown remarkable behavior spreading differences in two different "canonical" standard types of social networks. This was also summarized in Mediapost.
The two types of health networks that Professor Centola set up werecommunity neighborhood based, pictured at left, and random casual contact based, pictured at right. The blue dots represent the spread of health information and behavior adoption across each types of networks; white dots represent individuals not changing behavior. It turns out based on empirical evidence that spread of behaviors is more rapid in community based networks, moving slowly but effectively from community to community, trransferred through individuals spanning neighborhoods.
I recommend out blog readers see the MIT page and see the video of Prof. Centola.
What does this mean for consumer healthcare RM? Try to introduce your message through multiple well connected network neighborhoods where prospects of paitents have something in common. Do not rely on random chance encounters; do not presume "build it and they will come."
