Comments on: Colonizing the Outer Rings

By: lihaoxj16

lihaoxj16 — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:29:29 +0000

tiffany jewelry
Choose, buy and shop for on sale tiffany jewelry including Tiffany & Co Silver Necklace, Pendants, Bangles, Bracelets, Earrings, Rings and Accessories.
tiffany co
Tiffany Jewellery offering bangle Jewellery, bracelet jewelry, eardrop jewelry, necklace jewelry, ring jewelry, finger ring jewelry and earring jewelry
tiffany
tiffany and co
links of london
links london
Tiffany Style Silver Jewelry: Rings, Earrings, Necklaces, Bracelets and more Tiffany Jewellery at low prices.

By: officecleaning

officecleaning — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:09:03 +0000

I love your blog! you really have interesting things to say!

By: researchpaper1

researchpaper1 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:11:08 +0000

Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.

By: driessen

driessen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:28:03 +0000

Very interesting post. I agree with your conclusion. We're seeing this in practice too. The surprise it gives people when they connect to people inside and outside the organization they've never met! Your conclusions also relates to work done knowledge mapping and expertise location. And to a book I read some time ago: Cross & Parker, 'The hidden power of social networks'. It would be interesting to see if we could extend Dunbar's number. Dunbar relates to the strong ties, … number relates to weak ties, etc.

By: timbull

timbull — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:51:32 +0000

I've been thinking about this recently and reflecting on E2.0 implementations I've been involved in. One problem I've seen is shooting for a broad number of connections - trying to reach the outer-circle straight away which is where the clear benefits lie, but without a strong inner-core, the efforts collapse.

Perhaps deploying to a strongly connected group is the neccesary evolution to get to the outer-circle? My experience is suggesting to me that this is the case.

FaceBook is an interesting example because while there are lots of people who do have a high Dunbar number. I also think that many of these cut there teeth on that inner-circle where the tool was reinforcing the strong connections they already have.

We are starting to think about some of these issues as well with http://www.binaryplex.com where we are building a tool to work alongside ESSPs to help users discover the experts across the breadth of the organisation based on the work people are demonstrating in the ESSPs.

By: Amy

Amy — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:20:23 +0000

Colonizing of the outer rings or capitalizing on weak/potential ties requires connectors – people connectors, data connectors – without these the platform is worthless.

By: amcafee

amcafee — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:28:44 +0000

Hutch, thanks for your reply, and for the pointer to Burt's work. I wasn't familiar with that particular study, but Burt is a giant in the field, and one of the scholars I drew on when putting together the E2.0 target picture and highlighting the importance of the outer rings. Thanks for writing!

By: Hutch Carpenter

Hutch Carpenter — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:16:25 +0000

I've recently been reading the work of Professor Ron Burt, University of Chicago. His study of the Raytheon supply chain group looked at how well employees performed in generating quality ideas. What he analyzed was the degree of cross-organization connectedness for each employee, and how it correlated to the quality of the idea they submitted in the study. Social network analysis was used.

He found that employees who are more insular, talking only with a regular coterie of peers who knew one another, produced lower quality ideas. Employees who were “brokers”, spanning across different groups in the organization, consistently produced higher quality ideas.

A write-up of his findings and a link to the original research paper are here:

http://blog.spigit.com/permalink/2009/10/19/stu...

I connect your thinking on weak and potential ties to the future state of employees who draw ideas, knowledge and perspective from more diverse sources. Need to find them first, via ESSPs.

By: Neil LaChapelle

Neil LaChapelle — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:35:10 +0000

Showing weak-ties collaboration in progress? "Friction-free collaboration". http://projectshrink.blip.tv/file/2765340/

By: stu

stu — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:27:31 +0000

Great thought provoking post.
In the early phases of deployment of E2.0, it's easier to get those outer ring connections since (at least in my experience) there aren't many people to connect to, so it is a high likelihood that you'll be seeing more and sharing information with those who you wouldn't otherwise. There is the danger that as the environments become more mainstream that people will congregate with those that they already have stronger ties to, won't get as much added value out of the interactions and will be less likely to engage on the communities.
I agree that it is the new viewpoints and cross-functional visibility that holds great value. If we simply transfer the same activities and relationships onto new tools, it's an incremental rather than exponential gain.