The Rules of Contagion

“If the content you’re promoting is encouraging critical thinking and is giving more facts, that will affect susceptibility.”

The world is currently facing a global pandemic, unlike any seen in our lifetime. Yet organisations the world over have encountered something similar for many years. Almost irrespective of market, our largest publicly listed companies have a mortality rate on a 10-year horizon around 75%, meaning that by 2026, their average life expectancy will be just 12 years.

AKQAs Sam Sterling spoke to mathematician Dr Adam Kucharski, Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where he works on outbreak analysis. Kucharski is a TED Senior Fellow and author of the book The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread and Why They Stop. He’s also a doctor but not the medical kind, which makes him ideally placed to discuss the characteristics of a virus in structural rather than biological terms. From this AKQA Insight, we learn that the underlying principles of virality can be of benefit to businesses and that breaking into new markets and adapting to the environment maximises impact in the long term.