This is so genius..
“Ronald Burt, who created the ‘social holes’ network measure (find out where the connections between groups aren’t, and look for value in bridging, roughly), wrote a paper last year on the Social Origin of Good Ideas
A theme in the above work is that information, beliefs and behaviors are more homogenous within than between groups. People focus on activities inside their own group, which creates holes in the information flow of information across structural holes. People with contacts in separate groups broker the flow of information across structural holes. Brokerage is social capital in that brokers have a competitive advantage in creating value with projects that integrate otherwise separate ways of thinking or behaving.” – Clay Shirky
This paper is about social structure defining an advantage in creating good ideas, and people reproducing the social structure as they discuss their ideas. The hypothesis is that people who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas.
Ronald Burt pointed out the importance of “structural holes” — those nodes (people) that connect networks. If I know person A and person B and person A and B ought to know each other, but don’t, I am occupying a “structural hole” in their intersecting social networks, and making that introduction could create social capital [...]
Download the entire research paper by Ronald Burt here
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1 Clay Parker Jones // Nov 28, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Am reading this paper now… it’s amazing.
I also liked the part in there on how scientific ideas happen when people are young, typically, and people that have the ideas don’t convince older people that the ideas are right, they just have to wait until the older people to die before the ideas are accepted. Funny, that.
I was reading in a book today, Extraordinary Origins of Ordinary Things that the word Pontiff comes from the latin Pontifex (or something similar), which, if you’ve ever been to France, means bridge-builder. I suppose it’s not such a bad thing to pontificate, after all.
2 By/Association | Michael Karnjanaprakorn // Jun 4, 2009 at 10:02 am
[...] of research and wrote some posts on my blog. One around “Social Isolation“, “Social Origin of Good Ideas“, and another around “New Wealth“. I started to read a lot of articles around [...]
3 Swing for the Fences… or Not? | Michael Karnjanaprakorn // Mar 18, 2010 at 8:14 am
[...] A couple of nights ago, I had dinner with Nick and Thompson who told me about movie directors and their “calling cards” (if you don’t have friends outside of the tech/startup industry, you should start widening your circle because the more people you know outside of your industry, the higher you chance of being innovative and gauging good ideas). [...]
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