Who Is A Maven?

Many people ask me the meaning of the word “maven”. I first read the term in the book “The Tipping Point”, by Malcolm Gladwell, 2000.I found it both inspiring and ambitious. The paragraph below are quotes from the book.

The word Maven comes from the Yiddish, and it means one who accumulates knowledge. The fact that Mavens want to help, for no other reason than because they like to help, turns out to be an awfully effective way of getting someone's attention. The one thing that a Maven is not is a persuader. He’s not the kind of person who wants to twist your arm. To be a Maven is to be a teacher. But it is also, even more emphatically to be a student. Mavens are really information brokers, sharing and trading what they know. A Maven is someone who wants to solve other people’s problems.

Here is graphic example:




And the Wikipedia’s explanation of a Maven http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maven