Series 2, Episode 20 - How does behavior change spread through organizations? with Professor Damon Centola, University of Pennsylvania

Over the last few years of the Covid pandemic we all became used to the idea of contagion and, in particular, how viruses spread through communities. But have you ever thought about how change – most especially behavioural change – spreads through networks, societies and, indeed, organisations? To explore this further we are joined on the Brain for Business podcast by one of the world's leading thinkers in this area, Professor Damon Centola. About our guest… Damon Centola is the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Damon’s research centers on social networks and behavior change. His work has received numerous scientific awards and, in addition to his positions at the University of Pennsylvania, is a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Popular accounts of Damon’s work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TIME, The Atlantic, Scientific American and CNN, among other outlets. He is a series editor for Princeton University Press and the author of How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions and Change: How to Make Big Things Happen. Damon’s U Penn webpage can be accessed here: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/damon-centola-phd The Scientific American article referred to in the interview is available here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/ The underlying research in that article is available via this link: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aas8827