How Does This Vision Spread?
A fair skeptic's question: how does a deliberately small consortium expect to change an industry? Our answer is that it doesn't, not directly, and that was never the plan.
How lasting change actually happens
In Cascades, leading evidence-based change management expert Greg Satell, a Wharton lecturer, studied how lasting change actually happens in large systems, and found it never arrives by mass persuasion or top-down mandate. It moves through small groups, loosely connected, united by a shared purpose, whose visible example mobilizes the networks around them. The change that sticks is demonstrated first and adopted second.
This is our own history, not a theory we adopted
We hold this view for a reason stronger than admiration: it is our own history. TTIC began as a book series, not a campaign. The series became a consortium; the consortium's members carried the work into the standards bodies where they already held positions; and the standards spread through networks rather than marketing, cited by CHIME in its AI principles and carried into medtech contract language reaching more than 400 healthcare organizations through the HSCC framework. None of that was imported onto the industry. Each step diffused through the networks of the people doing the work. Greg Satell was a featured guest speaker at an early TTIC meeting; the method is in our foundations, not retrofitted onto them.
Our vision runs on role models
In practice, this means our vision runs on role models. We work with a small number of institutions and companies inside our networks, where our agency is real. Every function provides evidence of its performance, the chief financial officer gates the capital that follows, and the result is an example that can withstand examination. The example is the unit of diffusion. We do not own, and do not claim, the behavior, influence, or choices of parties outside those networks, and we are neither a training nor an education entity: our standards, books, and open resources exist for anyone who chooses to use them, and adoption belongs to the adopter.
In a field where only about 5 percent of enterprises achieve ROI from AI, one proven, evidence-supported institution persuades more than a thousand exhortations. The reference class does the arguing. We build the reference class.
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- Published by
- Trustworthy Technology & Innovation Consortium (TTIC)
- Author
- By Sherri Douville, Founder & Chair, Trustworthy Technology & Innovation Consortium (TTIC)
- Originally published
- Last updated
Cite this resource
Sherri Douville. “How This Vision Spreads.” Trustworthy Technology & Innovation Consortium (TTIC), 2026. https://trustworthytechnologyinnovation.com/answers/how-this-vision-spreads/.