Benjamin Todd

Take Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus, sparking a protest which led to a Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional.

Parks was a seamstress in her day job, but in her spare time she was very involved with the civil rights movement.

After she was arrested, she and the NAACP worked hard and worked strategically, staying up all night creating thousands of flyers to launch a total boycott of buses in a city of 40,000 African Americans, while simultaneously pushing forward with legal action.

This led to major progress for civil rights.

There are also many examples you don't hear about, like Viktor Zhdanov, who was arguably one of the highest impact people of the 20th century.

In the 20th century, smallpox killed around 400 million people, far more than died in all the century's wars and political famines.

Credit for the elimination often goes to DA Henderson, who was in charge of the World Health Organization's smallpox elimination program.

However, the program already existed before he was brought on board.

In fact, he initially turned down the job.

The program would probably have eventually succeeded even if Henderson hadn't accepted the position.

Zhdanov single-handedly lobbied the WHO to start the elimination campaign in the first place.

Without his involvement, it would not have happened until much later, and possibly not at all.

So why has communicating important ideas sometimes been so effective?

First, ideas can spread quickly, so communication is a way for a small group of people to have a large effect on a problem.

A small team can launch a social movement, lobby a government, start a campaign that influences public opinion, or just persuade their friends to take up a cause.

In each case, they can have a lasting impact on the problem that goes far beyond what they could achieve directly.

Second, spreading important ideas in a careful, strategic way is neglected.

This is because there's usually no commercial incentive to spread socially important ideas.

Instead, advocacy is mainly pursued by people willing to dedicate their careers to making the world a better place.

Moreover, the ideas that are most impactful to spread are those that aren't yet widely accepted.