How to find good ideas ..... by Jo Hill. Read more in Getting Noticed

I went to NESTA’s seminar on Social Networks on Monday to listen to Ron Burt from the University of Chicago and Meg Pickard from AOL who also writes a brilliant blog called meish.

I filled my notebook with scribbling – here is some of it…

Ron talked about the social origins of good ideas. He argued that:

- you don’t own the value of your ideas – your audience does.

- creativity is an import-export game – finding a good idea where it works well and then finding a new target audience for it.

- people who live at the intersection of social worlds are more likely to spot good ideas working in one context and be able to seed that idea into another context. Malcolm Gladwell calls these people Connectors – “the closer an idea comes to a Connector the more power and opportunity it has”.

I agree completely. We have started up a group called Make Your Mark Connectors – people who run networks in different regions, industries and sectors bringing people and ideas together. These are the people who make things happen. People like Oli Barrett, Raj Dey, Heather Wilkinson, Claudie Plen, Servane Mouazan, Jack Butler. (If you run a network and want to be part of this  - get in touch with oli@enterpriseinsight.co.uk)

Ron gave a few interesting links that explore the information market of social networks further – Touchgraph – a visual network mapping tool,  a music mapping interface called Music Plasma - type in your favorite bands and it maps out funky relations with others of similar style or musical influence. And a book about T-shaped Managers.

Ron ended with a call to action – “When you have the opportunity to learn how someone in another group does what you do differently – go!”

Then over to Meg Pickard who works at AOL, improving online social experiences. She compared two different types of online social networks:

- Identity driven social networks such as MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn – where a user creates a profile and builds networks of friends – some people on mySpace have 100,000s of friends! But essentially this is about creating lists of contacts and this seems to be the end in itself. I have to admit to uploading profiles on lots of these social networking sites – but once you’ve done that and built up your network of contacts, there isn’t much else to do.

- Topic driven social experiences offer new ways for people to connect online. For example Flikr, del.icio.us and Trip Advisor.These are passion driven clusters where the topic acts as the context for the social interaction. So for example, when you buy a book from Amazon, you get a link to ‘People who bought this book, also bought these items”. As a user, you feel the effect of others that have gone before you – they clear a path through the woods. However, the relationship is between data, information, stuff – which acts as a context to connect people.

Meg argues that in the old days everyone said Content is King – but nowadays Context is King. This is my favourite  example - Last.fm - a site that connects users who have similar music tastes – building the world's largest social music collection – try it. Another brilliant example is Squidoo where thousands of people are creating a handbuilt catalogue of the best stuff online. It's driven by passion and its heroes are everyday enthusiasts - I love it.

Some of Meg's recommended links Mashup, Halfbakery, Lazyweb, Innocentive.

Comments

[Roland Harwood]

Jo - great post and I'm really pleased you enjoyed the event. Hope to do much more in this space over the next few months so will keep you posted. If you are interested we've got another related event on Feb 27th. Check out http://uploadinginnovation.eventbrite.com/event/46454948 for more details and to register.

Regards,
Roland

[Peter Grigg]

I'm currently reading Yochai Benkler - The Wealth of Networks. The book is very dense and is taking some time to get through! - but hidden among the academic speak there are some arguments in there relevant to this. For e.g:

P52
Information and cultural production have three primary categories of inputs. The first is existing information and culture. We already know that existing information is a nonrival good - that is, its real marginal cost at any given moment is zero. The second major cost is that of the mechanical means of sensing our environment, processing it, and communicating new information goods. This is the high cost that typified the industrial model and which has drastically declined in computer networks. The third factor is human communicative capacity - the creativity, experience, and cultural awareness necessary to take from the universe of existing information and cultural resources and turn them into new insights, symbols, or representations meaningful to others whom we converse. Given the zero cost of existing information and the declining cost of communication and processing, human capacity becomes the primary scarce resource in the networked information economy.

-

I would suggest that - within reason - employers should not worry about the use of blogs in worktime but recognise the insights this creates (as Meg desribes) and the creative and enterprising capacities this requires to utilise.

[Caroline Chambers]

I agree with you Oli - employers should embrace the talent that comes from social networking, however news reaches us of Employers IT departments banning blogging websites (like Blogger) as they are concerned staff are spending too much time networking and not enough working!
Excellent Post Jo -

[Jo Hill]

Interesting question Peter about how employers are reacting to social networking in terms of their employers.

Meg Pickard says that writing her blog
has made her more knowledgable about life, online stuff, more interested in emerging technologies and more likely to play and experiment with ideas, technologies and features. She has always kept her blog-life very separate from her work-life - however it has unintentionally made her more valuable to the company she works for.

She says she has seen this happen often with people who write blogs outside of work - being able to bring different perspectives to their professional lives - 'code-switching between their different worlds'. More here http://www.meish.org/

[Oli Barrett]

Excellent post Jo! I was at the event and Ron really made me think too. Thanks for such a good write up!

[Peter Grigg]

Cheers for this great post, Jo. Social networking is here to stay then, hey? Is this the new social capital - was Robert Putnam wrong in Bowling Alone? Stayed tuned to this century - as 'hoodies' are accepted as a significant force in shaping society! Are we getting better at networking as a society - or is technology discouraging face-to-face time (cue someone writing a thesis on Blogging Alone).

I'm interested to know how employers are reacting to this in terms of their own staff (rather than 'businesses' using this as a communication tool). Strikes me that if there is a whole swarm of people coming into the workplace with 'social network talent' then employers need to think about how to utilise this to create enterprising, creative and interesting workplaces where people want to work.

For example, should i feel guilty that i am currently typing away on a blog, or should i think of this as learning time and be encouraged to do so?