Question

What does Gladwell mean when he says someone is a Connector? What characteristics make someone a Connector? What does Gladwell mean when he says someone is a Maven? What characteristics make someone a Maven? What does Gladwell mean when he says someone is a Salesperson? What characteristics make someone a Salesperson? Why are these three types of individuals so critical to the development of social epidemics?

Answer 1

Malcolm Gladwell in his book 'The Tipping Point' talks about three types of people,

-- MAVENS

• Mavens are people who make change happen through information and ideas.
• Mavens ask questions whenever they want to know or learn something.
• They are builders or engineers, etc. It is all about their ideas and information.
• Mavens feel overwhelmed when they have big ideas to unpack and on the other side become frustrated by how thin some ideas can be.
• Mavens get lost for days or even months working on some idea and happily exploring it.

--CONNECTORS -

• These are the people who make the change happen through other people. These people are like natural hubs.
• These are the people who hear the idea and think in the back of their mind that "Who is the person I know who can do this best" or "With whom should I connect for this work".
• Because they connect with people and they like doing that.
• These people have every kind of workers in connection.
• And can make a work done easily.
• Connectors love networking and talking to people, this way the ideas can be brought to action by them.

--SALESPERSONS -

• These are the people who make the change happen by persuasion.
• Salespersons are storytellers and are like the master of persuasion.
• They can take your idea and convince anybody to buy it or try it.
• They have the talent or ability to make the person but anything from them.
• They love to make anyone agree to whatever they are saying.
• So they are the people who can easily sell the idea.

In Gladwell's theory of 'The law of the few', he explains a social network and shows how messages are passed through word of mouth through these three types of people.

Connectors are the people who have a lot of connections, so these are most central nodes of the social network. Whereas, Mavens are the information gatherers of the society. They evaluate the messages and pass on to others. They can be considered as regulators of the social network. We can trust these people as they won't be spreading wrong news because they study the message thoroughly and then pass on the correct information. And salesmen are the ones persuading people to accept the message. So regardless of what the content of the message is, salesman can make the person but the message.

Thus all these three types of people are a part of a social network and play these roles in social events or epidemics.