The Socio-Economic Win-Wins of People Networks
30-Jan-03
| Debate our simplest test of network performance : The Trust of People Cubed Let any twenty people representing network partners meet at a roundtable
...how say you? is this simple enough to measure and manage the intellectual capital of? |
How to Practice the Value of People Networks
INTRODUCTION
Together with my Economist father Norman and others I have observed construction of the economics and social capitals of people networks for twenty years. Ever since our 1984 futures book on the first 40 years of the networking age and the social, communications, transport and leadership revolutions that the net will bring. A few years later this book was updated as The New Vikings as a start to blueprinting Sweden's entry into digital age management.
My father is a few years younger than Peter Drucker but travelled through many similar cultural and educational experiences - so much so that some of their terminologies get blurred (with others) in the coining : telecommuter, knowledge worker, intrepreneur, network economy. Though we always bow to Drucker as word arbitrator.
Funnily enough after 20 years we know very little for almost certain about the way people networks actually practice and value themselves. I am eager to learn more than that which starts this thread.
NETWORK POWERS
People networks have at least 3 known powers. Size is one together with two kinds of personal depth. Many investors have made the mistake of thinking that size is all that matters. It doesn’t; in true people networks it has no value by itself.
Personal depth 1 is about a social culture – why we believe in open community; why we will behave in ways that treasure our interdependence. A network needs to plant sufficient numbers of people to shape this role model and engage in crucial conversations wherever a newer member missed the purpose of interdependence. Better still it uses famous or deep voices who are customers or in other ways impacted by the network to sing the hymns and trust of open praise.
Depth 2 is about knowing some stuff that the world needs and having at least a quasi-open source policy for employing this methodology. It is vital that every member of the network feels passionately involved in these core methods and that is unlikely to happen if they can never practice them without being in the pay to someone else. Ideally, these core methods can also help amplify individuals’ sub-methods and own proprietary learnings but again in such a way that every member keeps asking is there a valid reason why I need to keep this proprietary rather than share its value multiplying connections with all.
As someone who has spent my working life advising companies in over 30 countries on brand architectures and the system dymanics of relationships value, I cannot think of a more critical brand to facilitate open access to the innovation superhighways and knowledge society capitals to Europe's people than the Angels Network of Excellence. Over the next decade we will start to see mass media brands wane and open cause network brands sustain. My heart knows which world I would like to spend most time participating in and in small ways creating. Let us see why and how Century 21 is that when the knowledge worker comes of age and proves our human race's emotions are always energised by the social as well as the economic motivation. This is also the way for Europe to play to its diversity advantage - is it not?
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ION Leverages the Power of a Social Network
Forget six degrees of separation - in a small island nation of 4 million inhabitants, such as New Zealand, two degrees of separation between any two given individuals is not uncommon. But before you can put that connectedness to work, someone has to provide the infrastructure upon which to grow social capital and trust.
That's exactly what we did when we developed an online community initiative called the Innovators Online Network (ION). This virtual network matches New Zealand's smaller "growth phase" technology companies with potential partners, mentors, investors and clients globally.
ION began as a research project and evolved into an exercise in social entrepreneurship that has subsequently delivered measurable economic outcomes to many of its participants.
I agree with Chris Macrae's suggestion that if you put 20 people around a table you will quickly identify synergies and mutually compatible skill sets. Imagine what could be achieved if you could engineer having 500 people engaging with one another around a virtual roundtable?
ION can be found at www.ion.net.nz