The “Lone Nut”, the “First Follower”, and the “Fast Follower” Strategies

In innovation, we are conditioned to celebrate the pioneer—the visionary who stands alone with a groundbreaking idea. This romantic image, however, overlooks a more critical catalyst for change. As illustrated by the “Lone Nut” theory, an innovator is merely an outlier until the arrival of the first follower. This crucial second actor provides the social proof that transforms a strange, individual act into the beginning of a movement. It is their public courage that lowers the barrier for others, validates the new idea, and shifts the dynamic from solitary eccentricity to collective action, proving that true leadership lies not just in starting something new, but in empowering others to join.

This principle of second-mover power extends directly from social dynamics into the corporate boardroom through the “Fast Follower” business strategy. Here, the logic is not about joining a movement, but about strategically capturing a market. A fast follower deliberately allows a pioneer to bear the immense costs and risks of educating consumers and proving a new concept. By observing the first mover’s successes and, more importantly, their failures, the follower can enter the now-validated market with a superior, more refined product. This approach challenges the “first-mover advantage” myth, demonstrating that in both social movements and market competition, the most enduring success often belongs not to the one who starts the race, but to the one who learns from it and runs it better.

“Lone Nut” and his “First Follower” ≠ “Fast Follower”
(these are 2 different strategies)

Key Takeaways

• An innovator is an anomaly; the first follower is the start of a trend.
• The first follower isn’t just joining; they are a form of leadership, showing others how to participate.
• For a movement to start, the initial act must be both visible and simple to replicate.
• Pioneering is expensive. The first mover pays the “market education tax” and bears the full cost of initial failures.
• The goal is not to clone the first product, but to launch the version 2.0 that customers wanted all along.
• Both strategies weaponize the act of waiting. The first follower waits for a signal to reduce social risk; the fast follower waits for data to reduce market risk.
• A pioneer’s best defense is entrenchment through patents, brand loyalty, or network effects, which can make a follower’s superior product irrelevant.
• Growth reaches a tipping point when the fear of being left out surpasses the initial fear of standing out.

The “Lone Nut” and his First Follower

In his influential TED talk “How to Start a Movement“, Derek Sivers presents a counterintuitive and powerful tactic for innovation and marketing centered on the crucial role of the “first follower“. Using footage of a lone man dancing ecstatically at a music festival, Sivers breaks down the social dynamics of how a new idea transforms from a strange, individual act into a collective movement. The core of his argument is that the first follower’s courage is just as, if not more, important than the innovator’s initial idea.

The Innovator as the “Lone Nut”

Sivers begins by highlighting the innovator—the person with the new idea or behavior. This individual needs the “guts to stand alone and look ridiculous”. Initially, this person is a “lone nut”, an outlier whose actions are not yet understood or accepted. For this innovator to succeed in starting a movement, Sivers emphasizes two key points:

• • Public visibility: the act must be public. An innovation hidden from view can never gather followers.
  • Simplicity: the idea must be easy to understand and, crucially, easy to follow. Complex actions create a barrier to entry for potential followers.

The Transformative Power of the First Follower

The pivotal moment in the creation of a movement is the arrival of the first follower. According to Sivers, this person performs an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower’s actions are what “transforms a lone nut into a leader”. Without this first public endorsement, the innovator remains an isolated individual.

Here are the critical functions of the first follower:

• Legitimization and Social Proof: the first follower’s act of joining in signals to the crowd that the innovator’s idea might not be so crazy after all. It provides social proof and legitimizes the new behavior.
• Reducing Risk for Others: it takes immense courage to be the first follower, as you risk ridicule just like the leader. However, by joining, you significantly lower the social risk for the next person. The second follower is no longer joining a “lone nut” but is now part of a small group.
• Publicly Demonstrating How to Follow: the first follower plays a crucial instructional role by showing others how to participate. This simplifies the process for subsequent followers who might have been interested but unsure of how to join.
• Shifting the Focus from the Individual to the Group: a key observation Sivers makes is that a good leader embraces the first follower as an equal. This act immediately shifts the focus from the leader to the collective “them”. The movement becomes about the shared idea, not the glorification of a single person.

Related Readings

• Diffusion of innovations theory: the classic academic framework by Everett Rogers that categorizes adopters into Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards. The “First Follower” is a quintessential Early Adopter.
• Crossing the chasm: a concept by Geoffrey Moore that focuses on the critical gap between the early adopters (visionaries) and the early majority (pragmatists), a crucial step that happens after the first follower has succeeded.
• The innovator’s dilemma: Clayton Christensen’s theory explaining how market leaders (pioneers) can fail by focusing too much on their existing customers, which opens the door for disruptive fast followers to serve an overlooked segment.
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP): the practice of launching a new product with just enough features to satisfy early adopters. The “Lone Nut’s” simple, imitable action described above, is a form of social MVP, and a fast follower often improves on a pioneer’s MVP.
• First-mover advantage: the direct counter-argument to the Fast Follower strategy, focusing on the benefits of being first to market, such as establishing brand recognition, capturing market share, and setting industry standards.
• Blue ocean strategy: a strategy that bypasses the pioneer/follower dynamic entirely by creating a completely new, uncontested market space (“blue ocean”) rather than competing in an existing one (“red ocean”).
• Disruptive versus sustaining innovation: a framework for categorizing innovation. Fast followers often engage in sustaining innovation (making a good product better), but sometimes they are the ones who introduce the truly disruptive version that changes the market’s foundation.
• Game theory in competitive strategy: the application of mathematical models to analyze competitive situations, where the success of one’s choice (e.g., entering a market now versus later) depends on the choices of others (the pioneer).
• Social proof and herd mentality: the core psychological principles that explain why the first follower is so effective. People assume the actions of others are the correct behavior in a given situation, especially in moments of uncertainty.
• Network effects: the phenomenon where a product or service becomes more valuable as more people use it. This is often the strongest defense a pioneer has against a fast follower (e.g., Facebook versus a new social network).
• Barriers to adoption & innovation resistance: The flip side of the coin—studying the specific psychological, social, and practical reasons why consumers actively resist new ideas, even if they are superior.
• In-group/out-group dynamics: how the first few followers create an exclusive “in-group” that is attractive to outsiders, leveraging a sense of identity and belonging to fuel a movement’s growth.
• Strategic timing and market entry: the broader business discipline of deciding when to enter a market, analyzing the trade-offs between being first, second, or even a late entrant.
• Punctuated equilibrium in technology: a theory that industries experience long periods of stability (equilibrium) that are suddenly disrupted by a new technology, creating a chaotic window of opportunity for both pioneers and followers.
• The red queen effect: an evolutionary hypothesis that states organisms must constantly adapt and evolve not just to gain an advantage, but simply to survive against ever-evolving opposing organisms. In business, this describes the relentless race between pioneers and fast followers, where each improvement by one forces the other to respond in kind.

Glossary of Terms Used

Minimum Viable Product (MVP): a basic version of a product that includes only essential features necessary to satisfy early adopters and gather feedback for future development. It aims to validate hypotheses about customer needs with minimal resources and time investment.

Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY): a measure of the efficiency of a manufacturing process, calculated as the product of the yields of each individual step in the process, reflecting the probability of a product passing through all stages without defects.

User experience (UX): the overall satisfaction and perception of a user when interacting with a product, system, or service, encompassing usability, accessibility, design, and emotional response throughout the entire interaction process.

User Interface (UI): a system that enables interaction between users and software applications, encompassing visual elements, controls, and overall layout to facilitate user tasks and enhance experience.