I would like to now segway a bit back to one of the other elements that I had
mentioned on the chart. Which is not only do these resonant
relationships make a difference across the levels, but so do social identity
groups. What is a social identity group?
Quite technically, it is a group from which you draw part of your identity.
So you say I'd like to belong to this group.
We have a lot of them. In the late 1960s a group was formed,
that were the fan clubs of the Star Trek show.
The original Star Trek show lasted what we would now two, or half seasons, went
off the air, and the producers and studio officials were not going to do anything
else. The Trekkers, as they call themselves,
other people might refer to them as Trekkies, started meeting and started
forming these fan clubs. And then they started to come together in
a convention. They would dress up and they would
reenact scenes. And within a few years they approached
the producers and the creator, Gene Roddenberry, and said, please bring it
back. They changed the studio and the creator's
and the producer's opinions. And of course now we have thirteen full
length feature movies. Five syndicated prime time shows.
Two or three syndicated cartoon series. And billions and billions of dollars in
merchandise later. And all of that started because a group
of people had a shared interest. And when you look at interviews of the
Star Trek fan clubs and the conventions. Whether in the US or in Italy, or
Germany, or Brazil, or Australia or France.
People talk about coming together to be themselves.
To reenact moments in a world when there was no wars, except for Romulans and
nobody really knows who Romulans are. And because Star Trek created an image of
a better world, a place where no one had gone before, a place where people of
different nationalities and dispositions and religious preferences were all on the
bridge at the same time. And even by the time The Next Generation
came along, Star Trek The Next Generation they had a different species, a Klingon
military officer. It represented something that people
aspire to and find comfort with. That's what social identity groups do to
us. Now, another comparison of a more
organizational nature would be Apple versus Sony.