Rich McLaughlin and Lynn Osborn bring this quote to our attention for a weekend thought out of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody
“Most good ideas come from people who bridge “structural holes”, which is to say people whose immediate social network included employees outside their department. Bridging these structural holes was valuable even when other variables, such as rank and age are controlled for. The highest percentage of good ideas came from people whose contacts were outside their own department. On the other hand, managers who were highly connected, but only to others in their department, had ideas that were not ranked as highly. Bridging predicted good ideas; lack of bridging predicted bad ones.” Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody
A great argument for networking more outside your team, function and organization. Enjoy the weekend!
Rich & Lynn
A final note: Here is a nice collection of resources for online applications that help people come together and publish collaboratively Online publishing and production
Giving google a little run for their money isn't always a popular thing to do, but it's certainly interesting. Try out ZOHO! You'll see what we mean.
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