Social Network Design tips
Stumble It!In ‘How to build your network’, by Brian Uzzi and Shannon Dunlap, Harvard Business Review December 2005, the authors argue that strong personal networks don’t just happen but need careful cultivation involving ‘relatively high-stakes activities’ with diverse groups of people.
A key tenet of bioteaming is connectivity ie good teams are well connected to each other and to their wider world. They manage their close relationships using strong ties (bonding social capital) and their wider relationships using weak ties (bridging social capital).
Networks are also vital in helping disseminate new ideas - no matter how good your new technology or product or process is it will go nowhere unless it reaches the right people.
Uzzi and Dunlap identify 3 unique advantages of networks - providing access to:
- private information
- diverse skill sets
- power
They argue that networks are built using one of three subsconscious principles:
- Self-similarity is picking people who are like you - this leads to 'inbred networks'
- Proximity is picking people who spend the most time with you - this leads to networks with 'echo chambers'
- Shared Activities is proactively building your network, not through casual networking or 'schmoozing', but by valid shared activities such as participation in voluntary enterprises together
The authors offer a useful worksheet for diagnosing your personal network along these lines and show you how to find the vital brokers in your network.
For more on personal networks checkout How is your personal ecosystem of relationships.
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Business networks are biological
Networks competing with networks is the future for supply chains. Harvard Professor Marco Iansiti in his book "The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation and Sustainability" predicts that the future business competition will not be between companies or even supply chains but between networks.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
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Social networking and relationship ecosystems
The current focus on ‘social networking’ might make us think we should spend all our efforts warming up distant relationships and creating new ones. However it would be a big mistake if we neglected the relationships we already have. We can learn a lot about relationship ecosystems from Jim Henson the inventor of the Muppets.
Social software design tips
I recommend a really insightful article in The Best Software Writing (I) by Clay Shirky entitled A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (April 2003) which takes good look at the design of social software in its widest sense - in other words any form of virtual community or collaboration system. Clay shares, from practical hard-earned experience, three things we must accept and four things we must design for if we want to create systems which are actually useful.
Social Media Optimization Simulator Game
One of the biggest challenges for any Enterprise today is Social Media Optimisation, defined as "a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites." The Social Media Optimization Simulator Game lets you instantly 'what-if' the effects of different social media activities (blogging, tweeting etc) on your enterprise.
I think "solving a real world problem" is also a key principle of social network design.