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10 July 2006 |
I just finished a round of reporting for a global engineering community. Attached is part of the report, which is the visualization of engineering community of practice (Netdraw, >300 nodes). In subsequent posts I will try to post the evolution of this community by introducing the 'time' factor in the network data, years 2001 - 2006. The labels have been removed. 
This happened at 12:23:54 AM or
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09 July 2006 |
Since Red Herring published the article "Friendster Wins Patent" last Friday, 7th of July, it only took 48 hours for more than 26,000 blogs on social networks to pick the news up. Most of the sites report the same news item: "as the generic patent offers opportunities to the once-beleaguered site to pursue licenses from similar social networks and competitors that offer the same services based on the idea of connecting people within a certain number of degrees of separation, Friendster president Kent Lindstrom tells Red Herring that “it is still too early to say” although Friendster “will do what we can to protect our intellectual property”. Check the patent out here. The problem debated around is of course that the foundation of this patent is the "small world theory" by Stanley Milgram.
It is argued that with the patent, Friendster can put itself up for sale, significantly increasing its value. This story - without a doubt - will be continued.
This happened at 4:13:14 PM or
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The 2nd Social network Forum, which was organized by the Leeds University Business School and which was held from the 30th of June until the 1st of July, 2006, has finalized. Summaries of the presentations can be found online in the forum wiki, but the slides and proceedings have not been posted (yet) online.
This happened at 3:21:03 PM or
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17 October 2005 |
Ontocopi lets you infer the informal relations that define a community of practice from the presence of more formal relations. For instance, if A and B have no formal relation but they have both authored papers with C (formal relation), they might share interests (informal relation). Because Ontocopi works in this way, we cannot claim without qualification that it identifies communities of practice. Significant informal relations might have little or no connection to the formal ones. Here, we refer to the networks uncovered by Ontocopi as COPs and to informal social networks as communities of practice. We work under the assumption that COPs are sometimes decent proxies for communities of practice.
More background information for reading here (PDF paper)
This happened at 10:24:56 PM or
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10 October 2005 |
A common objective for any CoP program is to encourage information flow, knowledge reuse, and learning among employees.This informational focus derives from early scholarship on the situated nature of learning and problem solving in communities.However, from a purely practical perspective, substantial efficiency and effectiveness benefits result from communities that promote effective knowledge creation and transfer. Unfortunately, in new communities, we typically see information flow and learning networks that are constrained by formal structure,homophilly, and to some degree personality or interests of those involved.These social forces create silos and a wide dispersion of connectivity that undermine knowledge transfer and performance benefits of communities.
Rob Cross in Assessing and Improving Communities of Practice with Organizational Network Analysis made by his team of the Network Round Table at the University of Virginia; the application of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) on communties of practice at fifteen participating organizations of the NRT. There's a couple of more resources there too.
This happened at 11:56:32 PM or
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02 October 2005 |
This article from Marie-Laure Djelic investigates the social network dimension in processes of cross-national transfer. The empirical focus is the conscious attempt to appropriate, in France after 1945, the American model of the large firm. Structural conditions—internal crisis and geopolitical dependence—created the context in which country-to-country transfer could take place. Our findings also show, however, that the transfer itself required the activation of concrete mechanisms and, there, social networks proved key. Our evidence shows in fact the tight and reciprocal interaction, the co-construction, as it were, of social networks on the one hand and processes of institutionalization on the other. Building upon our empirical findings, we propose furthermore that successful cross-national transfer hinges on a particular kind of network structure. In the story recounted here diffusion across national borders called for the smooth and successful articulation of two types of social networks—a cross-national “weak ties” network and national “strong ties” ones. In the end, this article accords with the current calls for cross-fertilization of institutional theory and social network theory. And we argue that both approaches are useful and complementary when dealing with country-to-country transfers.
Download the article in PDF here.
This happened at 2:17:27 PM or
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17 August 2005 |
US Patent Office, application 20050177385:
A method, apparatus, and system are directed towards managing a view of a social network user’s personal information based, in part, on user-defined criteria. The user-defined criteria may be applied towards a user’s relationship with each prospective viewer. The user-defined criteria may include degrees of separation between members of the social network, a relationship to the prospective viewer, as well as criteria based, in part, on activities, such as dating, employment, hobbies, and the like. The user-defined criteria may also be based on a group membership, a strength of a relationship, and the like. Such user-defined relationship criteria may then be mapped against various categories of information associated with social network user to provide customized views of the social network user.
I caught this one through Ojo. What's next?
This happened at 4:50:03 PM or
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29 July 2005 |
There are very few papers on the usage of SNA for knowledge networking in the mining / industrial minerals industry. Some (undocumented) work has been done with Borax, but the most obvious one is a 2000 report from Laurence Lock Lee. In his paper, "Knowledge Sharing Metrics for Large Organisations" which can be downloaded here he provides some insight in the structure and creation of the BHP GMN (Global Maintenance Network), founded back in 1997.The Global Maintenance Network is formalized, and very much structured (facilitated, too), and according to the paper not a community of practice, which is largely unstructured.
The rationale for a facilitated network over a pure community of practice is the business need to meet performance targets and deadlines, which are less of a driver for communities of practice.
BHP has started a very simple yet (seemingly) effective social network mapping of the networks, using sociometric parameters. The fact that it was limited was not a problem, because it still enabled the assessment of the impacts of business unit membership (formal structure) and geographic location on network activity patterns. The paper itself reveals some of the more obvious findings, and some paths forward to overcome the hurdles of data collection for SNA through surveys.
This happened at 1:24:17 AM or
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©
Copyright 2006 Erik van Bekkum.
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