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In 1924 America's National Research Council sent two engineers to supervise a series of experiments at a telephone-parts factory called the Hawthorne Plant near Chicago.

1924年，美国国家研究委员会派两名工程师去监督一系列实验，地点是芝加哥附近一家名为霍桑工厂的电话零件工厂。

Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods.

在过去十年中，数千项专利被授予了一些被称为商业方法的发明。

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that "social epidemics" are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well connected.

在他的著作《引爆点》中，马尔科姆·格拉德威尔认为，"社会流行"在很大程度上是由一小部分特殊个体的行为驱动的，这些人通常被称为有影响力者，他们往往信息特别灵通、极具说服力或人脉广泛。

The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the "two-step flow of communication": Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else.

所谓影响者的重要性源自一种听起来合理但大多未经验证的理论，称为"传播的两步流程"：信息从媒体流向影响者，再由他们流向其他人。

They found that the principal requirement for what is called "global cascades" - the widespread propagation of influence through networks - is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people.

他们发现，所谓"全球连锁反应"——即通过网络广泛传播影响力——的主要条件并不是少数影响力者，而是存在一大批容易被影响的人，即所谓的临界质量。