The Sustainable Network Model
Stumble It!As 9 out of 10 networks fail, including social networks, virtual communities and business clusters, I decided to start developing some “Sustainable Network Model” techniques to predict if a network has the necessary ingredients before huge amounts of effort are expended in vain.
Photo: Rubik's cube
I am thinking primarily about networks which are voluntary and self-sustaining rather than networks which are mandatory for participants as a result of their business or profession.
In a previous article, Design better social software using Living Systems Theory, I looked at networks as living biological systems and the 4 key components which need to be in place for them to thrive.
In this article I present a short introduction on how you can assess the viability and sustainability of a network from a human communications and interactions viewpoint:
Network Dialogs
There are 3 basic types of dialogues humans have with each other:
1. TCB (Taking Care of Business) – getting things done
2. Grooming – Nurturing relationships through trivia and small talk
3. Emoting – Sharing how we feel – good and bad
Proposition#1: A viable network needs to have all 3 types of dialogue present. There may be a dominant dialog but the other two must also be present to certain minimum levels if the network is to be self-sustaining.
Network Encounters
Network participation is a group activity – not just a one to one thing – it seems to me that there are 3 ways we can encounter others as we have our network dialogues:
a. 1:1 (one to one) – a two party conversation
b. 1:M (one to many) – one person is talking to a group
c. M:M (many to many) – a group where all members are talking with each other
Proposition#2: A viable network needs to have all 3 types of encounter present. There may be a dominant type of encounter but the other two must also be present to certain minimum levels if the network is to be self-sustaining.
Network Channels
There are 3 main channels we can use for these dialogues:
x. Speech – over the phone or face to face
y. eMail/Web – any form of asynchronous communications
z. Messaging – any form of real-time communications via web or mobile phone
Proposition#3: Some channels are better for some dialogs than others and some are better for some encounters than others. However if all the Dialogs and Encounters need to be present to some degree then this implies all the channels also need to be present to some degree.
A 3-Dimensional Network Sustainability Model
So if you put all this together you get a 3-dimensional view of a potential network as shown in the Rubik's cube at the top of the article.
To make things easier we can start by looking at any network as a simple matrix and creating a Network Heatmap for it, for example:
To illustrate this lets look at a few very simple 'caricature' examples:
- Voluntary Professional Networks
These networks often fixate on the TCB Dialog with no room for Grooming or Emoting – in fact these latter two dialogs might be positively banned or frowned upon. - Web-only Networks
Networks which only use the eMail/Web channel but don’t allow Speech or Mobile Messaging make it very hard for their members to Groom or Emote. - I-centric Networks
These networks present the rest of the community mainly as a resource which I can draw upon. Thus they support 1:1 and 1:M encounters but neglecting the M:M encounters which can be great for building group relationships.
Conclusions
Viewing a proposed network using the 3 dimensions of communications can be a powerful way to spot and fix obstacles and problems to sustainability before the network gets off the ground. What you are really looking for is a SUN (Sustainable Unified Network)!
In a future article I will examine network sustainability from other perspectives such as the extent of ‘Face to face’ (F2F) and unifying force (e.g. money, relationships or advancement).
Tags: Social Networks, virtual enterprise networks, virtual professional communities
Digg | 
del.icio.us | 
Reddit | 
Yahoo! | 
Add to my favourites
Comments
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
Related Social Networking Articles
Social Networks Conference videos now live for NLab
The NLab Social Networks Conference took place in the summer at De Montfort University (in Leicester, UK) featuring a number of speakers including Steve Clayton (Microsoft), Roland Harwood (NESTA), Andrea Saveri (IFTF), Jim Benson, David Asch and myself (Ken Thompson). The conference videos are now available online.
Social Network Analysis: an introduction
Any social organisation from the smallest team to the largest enterprise carries with it a social network. Until recently these social networks were largely invisible to the organisations which depended on them. Now Social Network Analysis or SNA is a hot topic but what is it, where did it come from and how does it work: Richard Cross, bioteams.com Guest Author, explains.
How to make a business network grow
A crowd draws a crowd but you need to be fit too
Albert Laszlo Barabasi in his excellent book "Linked - the New Science of Networks" lets us into a secret about how networks grow. Relatively new research has shown that most networks are not random, as previously thought, but "Scale Free" . New nodes in a scale free networks attach themselves to other nodes based on a "preferrential attachment rule" .
