Came across an interesting read this morning via Barry Briggs about this post by John Hagel.  Take a deep breath and power through the write-up as I think there are some good nuggets in there.  These concepts are also brought to life in Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail

Here’s my layman’s bullet points preceding the graph below:

• This article is about the difference between standard distributions (Gaussian bell curve) and extreme distributions (Paretian power law)
• You should understand the basics of a Pareto distribution from the "80/20" rule
• Examples of Paretian distributions are frequency of word use, sizes of cities, internet traffic, etc.
• Gaussian distributions can become Paretian distributions when "tension" increases (like competition or businesses evolving faster than capacity) AND the costs of connections are decreasing
• Extreme events become more common and are larger/of greater consequence and the natural reaction is to treat them like "outliers"
• The business challenge is to identify emerging extreme events that could impact the landscape as the costs of connectivity decline

Ok..now I have to go lay down.

(Image courtesy of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, "Linked: The New Science of Networks")