Made to be passed on

Most of what a business sells gets used up. A box is opened, a meal is eaten, a service is delivered, and that is the end of it. Ideas behave the other way. The more people take one, the more it is worth to everyone holding it.

Picture a small online shop in Kuwait that sells picture cards for teaching young children to read. The cards are good. What makes the shop grow is smaller than the cards: each order comes with a single page of reading games, written so a parent can send it on in one message.

Parents pass that page around, and not as a favour to the seller. They do it because a cousin's toddler learning alongside their own makes their own week better. The children have something to do together. The aunts have something to talk about. The parent who sent it becomes, for a moment, the useful one in the family.

That is the whole mechanism. People spread something when spreading it improves life for them and the people close to them. They are not doing anyone's marketing.

So the work comes in two parts. First, make the thing worth talking about, which many sellers skip because they expect the advertising to do the talking. Then take the friction out of passing it on.

Plenty of businesses get the first part right and never think about the second. They make something people love, then make it awkward to share.

Not everyone will pass anything on. But some people love being the link between others, and they are waiting for something good to hand over.