snowball effects
Growth begets growth
Snowball effects describe situations where something small grows progressively larger and more significant, like a snowball rolling downhill and accumulating mass.
The term captures how initial momentum compounds: A few positive reviews created snowball effects that made the book a bestseller.
Often used in plural to suggest multiple cascading consequences, though snowball effect (singular) is more common.
- amplifyIncrease in strength
- escalateIncrease in severity
- chain reactionSelf-sustaining causal sequence
- cascadeSuccessive downward flow
- compoundCombined into one
magnify · accelerate · multiply · increases · social contagion · going viral · word of mouth · avalanche · echo chamber · tipping point · slippery slope · exponential · runaway train · vicious cycle · proliferate · chaos theory · self-organization · momentum
snowball effectsdiminishing returns
Reduced benefit from additional effort
decay · attenuation · tapering off · petering out · fizzling out
snowball effectscontainment
Preventing hostile expansion
dead ends · firebreaks · circuit breakers · compartmentalization · self-limiting
snowball effectsself-correction
Fixing one's own errors
homeostasis · self-regulation · equilibrium · stabilization · checks and balances
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