One quick addition to your thoughts here: while those with significant influence in the organization (note: people with a lot of say or power are different than Gladwell’s definition of “influencers” in his tipping point analogy) may not be necessary for adoption, their lack of involvement may jeopardize the project, no matter how wildly successful amongst the rest of the participants. Like any technology project, the old stakeholder analysis matrix is good to trot out and look for interest vs. influence within the organization. In your typical hierarchical org-chart-driven company, this shouldn’t be too hard to do and the risk you mitigate is substantial.

High interest, high influence? Brilliant, we want some of them on our team please. Low interest, low influence? Perhaps we don’t spend as much time trying to get them excited. High interest, low influence? They’re on the right side of the fence — good supporters, the unsung heroes and everyday adopters of social tools in the enterprise. Low interest, high influence? Oh dear — be sure to keep an eye out on this crowd, it’s a potentially volatile bunch.

How many projects have you been involved with where a senior stakeholder in the organization came out of the woodwork at the 11th hour and put an end to the project? If the answer is not many, then you’ve done a brilliant job in managing your stakeholders well. But I’d be guessing that you’re in the minority of consultants in terms of projects involving organizational change and technology.

So perhaps a bit tangential to Gladwell’s concept of influencers per se, but something to remember when introducing potentially disruptive social tools in an organization where bottom-up network dynamics can be seen as undermining authority of those with influence.

We have found a couple of other factors. One is that these social tools have to be as simple to use as possible for the rest of the team. People are so resistant to change even the smallest hurdle can be too much and a lot of tools are still lacking basic usability. The team being introduced to the tool need to be focusing on the content and the task not the actual tool itself. This also means they are much more likely to propagate the use throughout the organisation.

The second factor is more difficult as it involves the personal politics of the team or organisation. If there are already problems these don’t go away with new tools. Having said that some collaboration tools can improve relationships as people can stay in the loop and join in when they are ready in a way they would never do in a physical meeting.