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***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** hi - yeah, I found the capitalization a bit odd too. it was just a cut 'n' paste. here is the original... http://bit.ly/6fpTeS p.s. you can sign-up for the newsletter too, if you so wish. -j -----Original Message----- From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 10:49 AM To: John T. Maloney (jheuristic); [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [SOCNET] Pattern-Based Strategy Capitalized words are the equivalent of loud shouting so my ears are ringing a bit here. I agree with the sentiment and so would most in this community. This is not what I was addressing before. The issue is not that metrics should come first. The issue is not to misrepresent results and make unwarranted predictions. Up to this point Drucker, Porter, Collins, and Peters have relied on case based analysis to validate their theories. This has met with very mixed results. Social network analysis is not case based and has a much stronger scientific basis and operates using generative theories rather than case based observation. Where Collins would say this is how great companies act he does not drive into the generative reasons that would cause successful individuals to congregate, for example. It may be that successful individuals get together for only a short period of time before natural Darwinian processes tear apart the relationships. I have no reason to believe this outside of the fact that this is just as explanatory as the results from Drucker and the rest. If we read Burt we see that brokers show above average salary returns. Individually this is really interesting. What is the balance between brokers and relative isolates that ensures a companies success? That is not well understood. We see some research in teams that suggests that there is a balance point in how cohesive a company is and that is interesting. Does this lead to the success of a company? If we look at complexity theory this balance could be the very undoing of a company (thing of Conways game of life and the difficulty in generating self-perpetuating structures). In time maybe this we will answer some of these questions (at least to some small extent). We are not there yet and need to be smart with how we represent this. Mark Goetsch Sent on the SprintR Now Network from my BlackBerryR -----Original Message----- From: "John T. Maloney (jheuristic)" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:08:12 To: <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: [SOCNET] Pattern-Based Strategy ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** Mark Goetsch, et al, see below. -j Thought Leaders - Friends of Russell Ackoff Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's Enterprise Thinking Network welcomes friends of our late colleague and mentor, Russ Ackoff, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_L._Ackoff who died on October 29th in Philadelphia, only a week after hip surgery, as reported in an In2:InThinking Network special-edition announcement. A number of Russ's friends, including his "guys" group from Bryn Mawr, will join us to share stories from their collaborative efforts with him, and answer questions and respond to reflections from those participants who knew him from a longer distance. For those fortunate enough to visit with Russ, they would have seen and read this treasured letter from Peter Drucker, hanging on his wall after receiving it on his 80th birthday; "I was then, as you may recall, one of the early ones who applied Operations Research and the new methods of Quantitative Analysis to specific BUSINESS PROBLEMS -- rather than, as they had been originally developed for, to military or scientific problems. I had led teams applying the new methodology in two of the world's largest companies -- GE and AT&T. We had successfully solved several major production and technical problems for these companies -- and my clients were highly satisfied. But I was not--we had solved TECHNICAL problems but our work had no impact on the organizations and on their mindsets. On the contrary: we had all but convinced the managements of these two big companies that QUANTITATIVE MANIPULATION was a substitute for THINKING. And then your work and your example showed us--or at least, it showed me--that the QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS comes AFTER the THINKING -- it validates the thinking; it shows up intellectual sloppiness and uncritical reliance on precedent, on untested assumptions and on the seemingly "obvious." But it does not substitute for hard, rigorous, intellectually challenging THINKING. It demands it, though -- but does not replace it. This is, of course, what YOU mean BY system. And your work in those far-away days thus saved me -- as it saved countless others -- from either descending into mindless "model building" -- the disease that all but destroyed so many of the Business Schools in the last decades -- or from sloppiness parading as 'insight.'" -j John Maloney The Future of Networks Mail: http://1id.com/=jheuristic Blog: http://networksingularity.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/jheuristic Tel: 415.902.9676 Fax: 415.276.6074 Skype: jheuristic -----Original Message----- From: Mark Goetsch [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 6:58 AM To: 'John T. Maloney (jheuristic)'; [log in to unmask] Subject: RE: [SOCNET] Pattern-Based Strategy 'Social network analysis is an information-age pattern analysis technique that illuminates shadow activities," concluded Ms. Rozwell.' Shows that Gartner is just trying to jump on the bandwagon. Trying to associate SNA with the type of pattern analysis that is done in software is confusing if not very damaging to companies that will think that this is as easy as getting UCINET and a couple of low level analysts to make unfounded predictions. There may be patterns that come out of SNA research that have predictive power, however this is something that still needs years of backend research and generative theory. Today SNA can gather and analyze data, derive some metrics, and tie them only to the most basic of generative reasons including theories like reciprocity and balance theory. SNA may even have something to say about social embeddedness. This is a far cry from trying to say that there are replicable patterns for determining when and how these things occur. Mark Goetsch -----Original Message----- From: Social Networks Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John T. Maloney (jheuristic) Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 6:25 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [SOCNET] Pattern-Based Strategy ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** Hi -- Gartner Says Social Network Analysis Can Help Enterprises Achieve a Pattern-Based StrategyT that Leverages Relationship Information. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1239913 _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message. _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message. _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.