Reverse-Engineering Why Some Ideas Break Through … and Others Don’t: A Research and Synthesis Case Study

At The Starfish Institute, we support visionary leaders in solving unique and complex problems to enhance their capacity for catalyzing enduring social change. These types of bespoke engagements often involve research, synthesis, and the distillation of insights that help to make sense of complex fields and issues. This enables leaders to make informed and intentional strategic decisions that build from existing knowledge and expertise.

Case Study: Reverse-Engineering the Ingredients for Influence at Scale

The Starfish Institute partnered with a visionary leader writing a book that could be poised to epitomize, give coherence to, and accelerate a social-change movement. At an inflection point in her own life’s work, this leader strategically identified the goal of her ideas and life story influencing a broader national (and international) audience at an inflection point in an emerging field’s trajectory.

The Challenge: Thousands of people write books and articles or do TED-like talks every year about ideas that they believe should break through the noise and capture the public’s attention, yet few do. We hypothesized that there is a method to the seeming chaos behind why some ideas – and their spokespeople – break through while others flounder and are dispensed to the dustbin of history. In this project, we sought to reverse-engineer what it takes for individuals and their pioneering ideas to: (1) capture those powerful, big ideas to change how people think and behave (2) captivate a dedicated audience, and (3) create movements that change individuals, institutions, and systems.

The Result: Using a set of co-created criteria, we collaborated with the client to select 10 impactful and influential individuals – spanning the fields of psychology, education, parenting, gender, organizational leadership, and civil rights – who have succeeded in breaking through the zeitgeist to change how individuals and institutions think and behave. We created case studies for the 10 individuals, identifying the pathways, strategies, and assets they leveraged to make change and attract a large public audience. 

We then discerned and honed in on patterns across this diverse subset, grouping the cases into four models of influence, based upon the core identities and pathways that shaped their impact and their primary levers for making change:

  1. Relatable Problem-solvers solve a specific problem for a specific group of people, standing in solidarity with a targeted audience to catalyze individual behavior change leading to collective impact.

  2. Charismatic Translators share big ideas with a broad, public audience, often merging heart with science to make technical, clinical research both accessible and engaging.

  3. Bridge-building Change Makers are deeply mission-driven, catalyzing change through system and policy-level impact and bridging divisions with compassion and empathy.

  4. Culture Colliders synergize with and give voice to the values and needs of a cultural or political movement, often receiving a viral response for their attunement to the times.

We next distilled insights across these 10 cases to identify a set of eight crosscutting success factors.  Specifically, we found that impactful individuals:

  1. Are intentional and purposeful about their target audience, primary levers for change, and change strategies

  2. Earn credibility based on their lived and professional experiences

  3. Shift focus from problems to solutions

  4. Translate scientific and expert knowledge in clear, relevant, and compelling ways

  5. Marry expertise with humility and humanity

  6. Build and benefit from an intentional public persona

  7. Leverage partnerships smartly to promote their work and expand reach

  8. Are attuned to the times 

Finally, we provided the client with a collaborative process for analyzing and directly applying the case studies to their domain, asking pointed questions that drew on the research and guided their next steps for achieving widespread social change.

Ready to take the impact of your work to the next level? Send us a note at hello@starfishinstitute.org.

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