Yes, I'm referring to that concept found in the 'Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell. In his book, he asks the question, "Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or PRODUCTS start epidemics and others don't?". He follows up with another question, "And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?". I enjoyed the book, and I wanted to mention the 'stickiness factor', I guess because I recently saw this picture, and thought of it.

This is a picture of a virus that sticks to us and is passed around by the attachments on its surface. It's a pretty effective mechanism for propagation.

So what about your product innovation process, is there a 'stickiness factor' step where you ensure your product features will have the amount of stickiness needed to propagate a successful release and launch?

Mr. Gladwell states that there are three functions for causing a product to go viral; people who transmit, the feature itself, and the environment in which the feature is operating. The stickiness factor is the feature itself. He calls the other two factors 'The Law of the Few' and 'The Power of Context' respectively.

The 'stickiness factor' involves making small but critical adjustments in what the goal of the feature is to overcome a feature's weakness. A product succeeds when the product management team learns how to make its features sticky. Is the product feature memorable? Is it so memorable, in fact, that it can create change, that it can spur someone into action?

Do the product features your product management teams create connect with the targeted market? Do your features make the user part of an interactive advertising system that endorses your product? Good client endorsement rankings are essential for maximizing 'stickiness factor". Users of your product need to be more than just a targeted market, they need to feel like co-designers and participants in the product management process. Good customer validation gates and feedback capability are required to develop the kind of stickiness needed to send your product viral.

If you look closely at epidemic ideas or product features, most the time, the elements that make the features sticky turn out to be a small and seemingly trivial. It's just a matter of getting into your clients shoes, and as the saying goes..."walk the mile". For features to be sticky, users need to know how to fit that feature into their lives. There needs to be a shift from lofty marketing fluff to specific and practical guidance that makes the feature personal, in other words memorable.

Feature rich products have created a stickiness problem. There is just too many features to remember. The product management team needs a way to enhance stickiness and systematically engineer stickiness into the feature definition. Features that stimulate the imagination or are boring can't create stickiness. It's been shown that for features to have stickiness they must be understood, and are ignored when they are confusing.

The key to product feature stickiness isn't as much to do with the feature, as it is to do with its definition and presentation to others, both internally and externally. We all want to believe that the key to making an impact on someone lies with the inherent quality of the ideas we present. But stickiness is created by tinkering, on the margin, with the presentation of idea. The line between hostility and acceptance, in other words, between an epidemic that tips and one that tanks, is sometimes a lot narrower than it seems.

The lesson of stickiness is that there is a simple way to package information that, under the right conditions, can make it irresistible. Feature definition must go beyond calling out what the market needs. Feature authors need to find that irresistible package of information that makes the feature sticky.