1. A universally appealing value proposition
2. The network effect (where the value proposition grows even stronger as individuals bring their friends into the fold)
3. A user experience that is second to none (yes, amazing design is a messaging variable)
4. A “price” that is free.

Even still, the growth of sites like Facebook is never 100% viral, because media support is always present—a factor caused, of course, by their rapid growth rates.

According to Michael Myser, there are three simple rules you need to follow to ensure success:

First, brainstorming sessions are structured events that produce valuable results. Define what you want to accomplish ahead of time, and communicate the goals in advance. It is extremely important that participants have time to mentally prepare.

Second, set specific session rules, including time limits and ways to resolve arguments and criticism.

Third, make sure you have a leader. This should be a person that the brainstorming participants feel comfortable (so even far-out ideas are embraced) and willing to keep things on track (Michael Myser, “When Brainstorming Goes Bad,” Business 2.0, October 2006.)

Unfortunately, at the same time they also said they were “generally disappointed” in their ability to promote it—but they knew intuitively that any sustainable effort must be grounded by their company’s people and culture.

D. Ronald Daniel of McKinsey & Company started the discussion about critical success factors in 1961, and Jack Rockart of MIT gave it renewed and expanded life in 1986. Every aspect of your business has at least some critical success factors. What they are depends on what you’re trying to do and its scope. They can apply to one specific task, or they can apply to your business in its entirety. They can be specific and unique or they can be broad and universal.

Once in place, critical success factors become ideal “filters” for subsequent decision making.

I saw how to use infrastructure and component costs to our strategic advantage. One company I worked for, while it was a much smaller entity, drove an entrenched multibillion dollar industry leader to the brink of bankruptcy. It developed a single-minded channel strategy, and then provided liberal margins to resellers, enabled by lower manufacturing costs in Taiwan.

Our competitor was stuck with sales overhead it couldn’t shed fast enough. It was an eye-opener: the unique power of the supply chain in all its glory.

From academia to large companies, from consultants to advertising and public relations agencies, from businesspeople to sociologists, psychiatrists and even neuroscientists, there has been a determined march forward to discover the mysteries of why people buy the products they do.

The guesswork of the distant past has been replaced with high-quality research and well documented field experiments. It may not be physics, but important principles have emerged from this collective effort, validated time and again through decades of application.

New Product Development is now a science.

So China is no longer satisfied with being just the world’s factory—it wants to move to the “top” of the supply chain where margins are fattest. To do that, the country needs it own mega brand names, and intellectual property. Lenovo was purchased from IBM, Volvo was purchased from Ford. But much, much more needs to be done.

And they need to move quickly, as new contract manufacturing aspirants from Mexico, Eastern Europe, and even Vietnam nip at their heels with even lower component costs and wages.

Once again, there were three fundamental new product development lessons that emerged: the most successful companies develop clear project goals, they emphasize cultural behaviors that lead to success, and they build strong relationships with customers. Companies that employed these principles were twice as likely to meet ROI targets.

For simplicity, we’ll distill those practices down to three core words: Goals, Culture, and Customers.