People who have mastered certain aspects of technology have enormous influence on others around them. That’s the word from Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink, The Tipping Point and Outliers. And that influence has nothing to do with money, power or business but rather relationships. Addressing IBM’s annual Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas in October, Gladwell admitted he knew nothing about electronics.

“I just knew I needed a laptop. So I went into CompUSA and saw these identical black boxes in a row. And each one had a card with strange writing on it. I had no idea what it meant. So I tried educating myself by reading Laptop Week but, unfortunately, it’s written by the same people who write the cards. So I phoned my brother, who runs an IT department for a school, and after talking to him, he told me I needed a certain make and model.”