How change spreads, or doesn't

Book review of Change: How to make big things happen

One certainty in modern life, apart from death and taxes, is change. It’s like a wave: Ride it and it could carry you a long way; resist it and you risk being relegated to the bottom.

Besides accepting the inevitability of change and adapting to it, we also need to understand how it works. What makes humans discard long-held beliefs and norms and adopt new ones? Why do some trends catch on, capture the popular imagination and spread like wildfire, while others wither away? And what role do networks play in their spread? These are some questions Damon Centola, professor in