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.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best – in this case automatically ‘triaging’ inbound email by user defined importance. SNARF allows the user to design their own personal email importance criteria such as the "number of emails sent to me in the last month".

I discovered a great site Visual Complexity for anyone interested in network visualization with the aim to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.

We often have in our head the stereotype of the brilliant but solitary artist or writer who cannot, or will not, work with anyone else but is this the whole story on creativity and innovation?

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.

Nature’s preferred method for creating complex new species is known as Symbiogenesis which suggests that complex new species usually form, not by an act of independent ‘quantum evolution’, but by the coming together and merging of two or more (less complex but independent) species. We can also apply this to business networks.

Richard Cross describes how the study of communications in societies untouched by cyberspace has enabled the rediscovery of lost communications instincts and the invention of a new patented technology for knowledge dissemination in enterprises.

In Social Network Analysis: an introduction, Richard Cross, bioteams.com Guest Author, explains the importance of making organisations hidden social networks visible. In this follow-up article Richard discusses how Social Network Analysis (SNA) actually works in practice.

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.

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.