These are targets every person or group trying to instill social change needs to know to gauge the likelihood or their success.
Recent research has shown that for true social change to occur, you’d need 7-10% of a population to hold an unshakable belief to be able to change the belief of that population within a reasonable amount of time. This is as long as there isn’t another group with another unshakable belief opposing it, like a different religion (Discovery News, August 6 2011). Combine that with the 1% you need to start a movement (Microtrends, by Mark Penn) and you’ve got two real targets for any organization seeking to create lasting social change. There’s none of those around these days, are there? 🙂