I have been amazed at how many people have asked me for a really simple and very short guide to LinkedIN for small businesses and independent consultants. So here it is:

Bioteams.com has previously published a number of articles on Social Networking which have addressed the Analysis perspective. I am delighted to round out the coverage of this crucial area with an excellent guest article by business networking guru Tony Altham which offers ten practical tips for creating, building and sustaining profitable business relationships.

A recent research report by University of Queensland Business School (Australia) academics Tim Kastelle and John Steen suggests that large enterprises can make major gains in productivity by investing in their internal communication networks. This resonates strongly with the concepts of bioteaming according to practitioner Max Bhanabhai.

Way back in the social networking Dark Ages, OK - October 2005, I published a "A Virtual Community Development Model" with sports metaphors for each stage. Looking back today I think some of it still applies to the development of those social networks driven primarily by shared interests/knowledge (rather than by relationship building). But see what you think?

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.

One of the papers I re-read lately is Clay Shirky's landmark speech at ETech in 2003 "A group is its own worst enemy" where he identifies 4 principles for social software/social network design. These principles are every bit as relevant today as they were 5 years ago.

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.

The European Commission have recognised the massive strategic economic importance of Digital Business Ecosystems by publishing a hugely impressive multi-disciplinary book (240 pages) which seems to resonate with my own implementation-oriented ideas on Bioteams and The Networked Enterprise and merits detailed study by anyone interested in the convergence of business networks, digital technology and systems/ecosystems thinking. Download it free.

Ken Thompson, author of Bioteams and The Networked Enterprise, gives a 25 minute introduction to bioteams and describes how it can be applied to make social networks, fan groups, virtual communities and business networks more agile, intimate, satisfying and sustainable. The presentation also addresses todays big question - "How do you get engagement in a large group?"

Ken Thompson presented on the topic: "Bioteams: what can we learn from natures social networks" at the NLab Social Networks Conference (19th June 2008) at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

New Scientist reports on new research at the Harvard Medical School which suggests that targeting anti-smoking campaigns at social networks, rather than individuals, is a more effective way to reduce smoking rates.

I have been checking out Agna a neat little free social network analysis (SNA) tool which runs on both PCs and Macs (on top of Java). Agna allows social network data (directly input or imported from external systems) to be displayed, manipulated and analysed graphically in a number of ways/styles and is very easy to install and use. Agna is a great way to get into SNA.

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".

A crowd draws a crowd but you need to be fit too. Distinguished Physicist Albert Laszlo Barabasi in his excellent book "Linked - the New Science of Networks" lets us into the secret of how any kind of network grows.

I was just about to write a post on the excellent article "How Leaders Create and Use Networks” from the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review when I discovered Jay Cross had beaten me to it!

Bioteams pay as much attention to their weak ties: the collective external networks of relationships and their connections to the wider organisation and environment as their strong ties: their internal team structures.

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.

Leading complexity thinkers apply biological principles to enterprises: The Biology of Business is a set of essays by ten researchers and practitioners in Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS).