Very interesting post! It generates an interesting image in my mind, which is an employee who adds a lot of value to many things in general, but nothing in particular, and is highly valued for that reason. In other words, if an organization had a lot of these kinds of tools for leveraging peripheral participation on tasks, and someone turned out to be really very good at those kinds of tasks across many functional areas, their working day might end up consisting of providing input into these dispersed, weakly connected networks. It would be unclear where such a person would sit on a tradtional org chart.
I am exploring the value of using a concentric collaboration model in online education communities, and your work is enriching my sense of what that might mean. My work so far on that is at: http://www.educause.edu/blog/HiredEd/OrbitalLea...
jheuristic
· 2 months ago
Hi -
Novel observations on "The Strength of No Ties." There is a convergence of SNA and E2.0. It is the mainstay of collective intelligence networks... See:
You are correct stating that the greatest opportunities will be found in the outer rings of your diagram. Yet, this is only one perspective on corporate reality. Another one would be 'how we expect the ties to be'. Between close collaborators, we would expect strong ties. Yet, in reality, we might often find weak or even no ties. Whatever the reasons for these 'anomalies', ESSPs will have tendency strengthening these anomalies instead of removing them. Indeed, most ESSPs facilitate our quest for 'personal confirmation' (more thoughts on this in http://www.xpragma.com/view125.php).
So, yes, the value is in the outer rings and perhaps, implementations should deliberately focus of these segments. Otherwise, heavy interaction between already strong ties might be seen as the false proof of success.
And no, ESSPs will not get us past Dunbar’s number.
MarcB
Saqib Ali
· 2 months ago
I agree that e2.0 is most useful at the outer rings, however the people who are sitting in the outer most ring are usually the ones asking others to communicate/collaborate on their behalf.
"I will email the information to you, can you please post it on the wiki for me?".
Sounds familiar?
It is a wiki! Post it yourself.
Strategic Frontend
· 2 months ago
We found that companies doing market risk management need structured blogs and wikies to assess early warnings. Weak ties proved especially value able evaluating market riks.
G. Lance Strzok
· 2 months ago
Andrew,
I do agree with you on the greatest influence taking place in the outer circles. I also agree that made available to the inner circles, it will likely improve communication and collaboration there as well. So in general, making ESSP's available to the entire enterprise enables improvement across the entirety of your target.
If I were to add anything of value to your discussion, it would be that deploying these ESSP's in the outer rings alone is not enough to ensure success. I think a related question that impacts the effectiveness of doing so would be - where and how do you create a culture of collaboration that will utilize these tools? Followed with which one do you put the most effort into and in what order? Do you start with something small but effective, prove its utility, then build the culture of collaboration around that tool followed up with another tool or tools that allow even more growth to take place? Because if you don't see the use of the initial tools, and the culture does not begin to take hold, then further tools may be a waste.
stu
· 2 months ago
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.
Interesting post, conceptually oposed to all trends that talk about targetting all the time. Of course, the number of subjects or users increase, but it gets harder to penetrate as the primary target fades away. Rgds
Hutch Carpenter
· 1 month ago
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:
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.
amcafee
· 1 month ago
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!
Amy
· 1 month ago
Colonizing the outer rings or capitalizing on weak/potential ties requires connectors - people connectors, data connectors - without these the platform is worthless.
janitorial services
· 1 month ago
The outer rings, uh? Nice metaphore indeed!
timbull
· 1 month ago
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.
driessen
· 1 month ago
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.
researchpaper1
· 1 month ago
Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.
All Comments
I am exploring the value of using a concentric collaboration model in online education communities, and your work is enriching my sense of what that might mean. My work so far on that is at: http://www.educause.edu/blog/HiredEd/OrbitalLea...
Novel observations on "The Strength of No Ties." There is a convergence of SNA and E2.0. It is the mainstay of collective intelligence networks... See:
http://www.collectiveintelligencenetworks.com/
-j
So, yes, the value is in the outer rings and perhaps, implementations should deliberately focus of these segments. Otherwise, heavy interaction between already strong ties might be seen as the false proof of success.
And no, ESSPs will not get us past Dunbar’s number.
MarcB
"I will email the information to you, can you please post it on the wiki for me?".
Sounds familiar?
It is a wiki! Post it yourself.
I do agree with you on the greatest influence taking place in the outer circles. I also agree that made available to the inner circles, it will likely improve communication and collaboration there as well. So in general, making ESSP's available to the entire enterprise enables improvement across the entirety of your target.
If I were to add anything of value to your discussion, it would be that deploying these ESSP's in the outer rings alone is not enough to ensure success. I think a related question that impacts the effectiveness of doing so would be - where and how do you create a culture of collaboration that will utilize these tools? Followed with which one do you put the most effort into and in what order? Do you start with something small but effective, prove its utility, then build the culture of collaboration around that tool followed up with another tool or tools that allow even more growth to take place? Because if you don't see the use of the initial tools, and the culture does not begin to take hold, then further tools may be a waste.
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.
Rgds
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.
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.