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
The Networked Enterprise (TNE) book published
Knowledge-based SMEs and SMBs (small fish) need to read "The Networked Enterprise (TNE) - competing for the future through Virtual Enterprise Networks (VENs)" with its numerous real examples and proven techniques to find out how to use VENs to develop strategic partnerships with BIG FISH (large enterprises) to propel them to the next level of competitive success. BIG FISH must also use TNE to gain enhanced access to innovation, agility and alternative risk/reward and cost models by partnering with small fish via VENs.
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Social networking: privacy issues
The Washington Post reports that schools in and around the US capital are warning pupils to be careful what they write or what pictures they post to teen-friendly social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Xanga because prospective employers or college admissions tutors could be reading. For more see Teens' Bold Blogs Alarm Area Schools.
Personal relationship ecosystems: learning from the Muppets!
The current focus on 'social networking' might make us think we should spend most of our efforts warming up distant relationships and creating new ones. However it would be a big mistake to neglect the relationships we already have. We can learn a lot about relationship ecosystems from Jim Henson the inventor of the Muppets.
I think "solving a real world problem" is also a key principle of social network design.