Laura’s Winning Ideas

This is an example of how I teach technical professionals the principles of marketing. Here, we discuss the science of networking. This is also a good way to introduce the value of contributing material to a CRM or knowledge management system.

Math and marketing. Hard to believe, but in the early 1960’s, mathematicians Pool and Kochen proved that networking is the most powerful tool small business people have. They discovered a formula proving that everyone in the United States is two personal contacts away from every other person in the United States. Using mathematics, they proved that, if you had a database of everyone you know, and then added everyone that all of your contacts know, you would have a personal contact to every person in the United States.(1) In 1966, Stanley Milgram, a Psychologist, designed an experiment to test the practical application of this theorem. He gathered together a class of graduate students at Pennsylvania State University and a copy of the phone book from a small town in Montana.

They opened the phone book to a random page, selecting a name. The class members tracked their progress in finding a bridge of personal contacts to this individual. They were successful in several directions, never using more than six personal contacts to create this bridge.(2)

Milgram’s experiment has been run on college campuses many times since, each time proving the same fact: starting with 15 to 20 people, you are no more than six steps away from anyone.

If you could create a perfect dataset (that is, you had a complete list of everyone you know, and they each could contribute a complete list of everyone they know) you could reach anyone in just two steps. But in the practical world, no one remembers everyone they know, and no one knows everyone that those people know. And yet, in the practical world, you are still less than six steps away from ANYONE you need to meet.

Networking is key to finding the steps and building the bridges to people you need to meet. The more people you know, and the more you know about them, the greater your opportunities to find the steps and build the bridges to people you need to meet.

So, who do you need to meet?

[Laura Ricci owns 1Ricci LLC, a marketing management consulting firm. Helping engineers and scientists understand and embrace marketing is her specialty. LRicci@1Ricci.com]

(1) Pool, Ithiel de Sola, and Manfred Kochen. 1978. “Contacts and Influence” Social Networks. 1: 5-51. Mathematical formula published long after the theorem that inspired Milgram to construct his experiment.
⁽²⁾ Milgram, Stanley. 1967. “The Small World Problem.” Psychology Today. 1: 61-67