Incidence

The spread of innovation through networks mimics the spread of disease through populations. Hence the term, "viral marketing." So the concept of "incidence," a term from epidemiology may be appropriate for entrepreneurs to use.

From Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, "incidence" is

A measure of the risk of developing some new condition within a specified period of time. Although sometimes loosely expressed simply as the number of new cases during some time period, it is better expressed as a proportion or a rate with a denominator."

The Wikipedia article also gives the term, "incidence proportion," also known as "cumulative incidence":

The number of new cases within a specified time period divided by the size of the population initially at risk. For example, if a population initially contains 1,000 non-diseased persons and 28 develop a condition over two years of observation, the incidence proportion is 28 cases per 1,000 persons, i.e. 2.8%.

And then, the article also describes the "incidence rate":

The number of new cases per unit of person-time at risk. In the same example as above, the incidence rate is 14 cases per 1000 person-years, because the incidence proportion (28 per 1,000) is divided by the number of years (two). Using person-time rather than just time handles situations where the amount of observation time differs between people, or when the population at risk varies with time.

Anyone interested in the term should read the entire Wikipedia article and follow all the links and references.

Epidemiology offers offers the entrepreneur a way of shifting perspective to think about the creation and adoption of new products in new ways. Rather than time-worn jargon such as "market share," "market potential," and so forth, think of markets in terms the extent to which various networks are at risk of adopting new products.

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