In /The Tipping Point/, Malcolm Gladwell argues a tiny minority of unusually informed, persuasive, well-connected influentials drive trends. The idea sounds intuitive and compelling—we think we see it happening all the time—but it's wrong. Think about it: these charismatic individuals would need to drive the meme beyond two degrees of separation, through people they don't know.

Instead, trends take root when a sufficient number of open-minded adopters propagate the meme in chain reaction, depending more on prevailing culture than key opinion leaders.

Too much uninformed skepticism does our economy no good. This in part seems to be Rochester's problem. Even as a freshman in college, my friends and i noted how Rochester seemed years, even decades, behind in smart worthy trends.

Update: this Harvard Business School Review article is now hidden behind a paywall. At http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0702A&ml_subscriber=true is a synopsis.