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How Ideas Spread
The “Theory of Weak Ties” is a theory about how ideas are transmitted from one person to another and from one group to another in social networks. This theory can help us to understand better how we come up with novel ideas and approaches as individuals. It also helps us to implement some simple but highly effective approaches to make organisations more innovative. In 1974 Mark Granovetter (a sociologist) wrote a paper on social network theory called: “The strength of weak ties”. [American Journal of Sociology, Vol 78, (May 1973), 1360-1380] This has been followed up by many articles including: “The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited”. [Sociological Theory, Volume 1 (1983), 201-233.] To read more on Mark Granovetter have a look at his entry in Wikipedia: I have only come across these articles very recently and on reading them found that they raised a number of questions and thoughts for me. This article is a very brief summary of the two articles above and my thoughts on some of the possible applications to idea generation and innovation. summary of the articles People have two types of “ties” to other individuals: Strong ties: between a person and their friends, family members. close work colleagues etc. Strong ties are useful because they provide the individual with support and a sympathetic group of people for sharing their ideas with. On the other hand they limit spread of ideas and our strong ties may not be sympathetic to ideas which are radically different to their own. Weak ties: between a person and people who they have met or know in a peripheral way. These are useful for spreading ideas more widely. Since they are by definition ties to people who we do not know very well we may not approach them with our ideas. The stronger the tie connecting two people the more similar they will tend to be. This is good for support but so good for individual openness. The network that an individual relies on will tend to consist of strong ties. Groups of people having strong ties with each other will tend to cluster. Ideas will not move from one group to another through the strong ties because individuals within this group will only tend to have strong ties with others within the same group. So a group with strong ties is very good at maintaining existing ideas but not good at developing or adopting new ideas. Individuals in a group consisting only of strong ties will tend to become more similar to each other. Different ideas in different groups of this type will never spread between groups. Strong ties are good for maintaining the status quo. Ideas can be spread through strong ties or weak ties but because of the strong ties within groups weak ties are necessary to spread ideas between groups. Such weak ties can be thought of as “bridging” ties. Bridging ties are needed for ideas to reach a large number of people and to spread more widely between social groups. One bit of Granovetter's research was on how people got a job if they had used their contacts to get this job. The research produced the following percentages: 16.7% saw their contact often (at least twice a week) 55.6% saw their contact occasionally (less than twice a week but more than twice a year) 27.8% saw their contact rarely (once a year or less) The surprising thing here is that the effectiveness of the weak ties is considerably greater than the strong ties i.e. nearly twice as effective. First adopters of ideas are the people who first think up or adopt a new idea. They tend to be marginalised in our society and organisations because their ideas are different. Therefore they will tend not have many strong ties. First adopters which have many weak ties will be more successful at getting their ideas adopted than first adopters with few weak ties. So we need to provide a place for first adopters in our society or organisation otherwise new ideas will not be created or promoted. An early adopter is someone who has a number of strong ties but also has exposure to the first adopters. They can pick up the idea from the first adopters and spread the idea through their strong ties. This is only a very brief summary of Granovetter's work on weak ties. The following are some ideas that reading these articles provoked in me. They fall into three categories: some thoughts on innovation in organisations some thoughts on idea generation some thoughts for you personally some thoughts on innovation in organisations group think I see “group think” as being very dangerous to our society generally and to innovation within organisations in particular. Most organisations spend a lot of time, effort and money developing strong groups. I think this is generally a very good thing but if the group becomes overly cohesive then there is a danger of “group think” developing. The group will become unwilling to adopt new ideas from within their organisation or from their clients. The group will also develop a “restricted” language for communicating with each other because of their common thought processes. This allows highly efficient communication within the group but makes it hard for the group to communicate to other parts of the organisation or understand what other parts of the organisation are saying. So for organisations to innovate effectively they need to make sure that group think does not develop. If they can insure that each group within the organisation has at least one “early adopter” this would certainly help. It would also help if groups could be made aware of their “restricted” code and encouraged to communicate with other parts of the organisation using a more “elaborated” code. first and early adopters Where do the first and early adopters live within your organisation? First adopters need to exist somewhere within your organisation to generate new ideas and import ideas from different environments. If the organisation has become very cohesive or structured over time then first adopters will be pushed out of the organisation completely. Have you identified your first adopters? Do you need to get more into your organisation? Do you provide a place where they can exist and prosper? Do you provide ways to encourage them to make lots of weak ties within and outside your organisation? (This last point also applies to all your staff, not just the first adopters). What about the first adopters who are needed for propagating the new ideas? Have you identified the early adopters in each group? Have you created mechanisms for them to prosper? implementing innovation When trying to make an organisation more innovative often structured mechanisms are relied upon. I am not saying that these are necessarily bad things but they need to ensure that weak ties are preserved. Often structured approaches will use the organisation's hierarchical structure (strong ties) to disseminate an innovation culture. This needs to be complemented with as less formal mechanism which encourages innovation via weak ties. These may be “innovation clubs”, cross group working, rotation of groups to name a few. networking groups and business groups A lot of emphasis in networking is focussed on “similar interests”. An engineering company may be a member of their national engineering association and send people regularly to meetings and conferences. They may do the same with groups of their customers. These are approaches which help to develop strong ties. I think that this is a good thing to do but that it should be augmented by a strategy to develop weak ties. If you are an engineering company then why not join an association for something that is totally unrelated. At first sight this might seem difficult to justify but the evidence from Granovetter's research and from others who have built on his work would suggests this could be a more profitable route (because of the creation of a lot of weak ties). some thoughts on idea generation In the toolkit section on my website there are many techniques for generating ideas on demand. Whilst reading Granovetter's articles it occurred to me that “weak ties” might also be operating in our thought processes and that this would further explain why some of these techniques work so well. If thoughts cluster in our minds connected by strong ties then one thought would usually only lead to another thought within the same cluster. To jump between clusters we would need to have weak ties between the clusters. If we did not have any weak ties between clusters we would be permanently stuck in one cluster or another. So perhaps these techniques help to create new weak ties and reactivate existing ones. random inputs This technique could be explained by weak ties because any word will tend to have many associations in your mind. For example the word “coffee” has associations in your mind with “brown”, “coffee smell”, “hot” etc. So when you are stuck in your thinking (in a cluster of strong ties thoughts) then perhaps the random word activates a whole bunch of weak ties which make it easier for you to jump between clusters. reversal This technique could work because if forces your thinking out of a cluster of strong ties thoughts by forcing your thinking into an opposite which requires you to move out of the cluster. analogy This technique helps your thinking develop an analogy for the situation you are thinking about. This moves you from the cluster of strong ties ideas that you are focussing on to the analogy. The analogy will be much “richer” in your mind and so have many more weak ties. The likelihood is that one or more of these weak ties can act as a bridging tie. some thoughts for you personally developing your weak ties On a personal perspective it may be very useful for you to develop your own weak ties, either by creating new ones or by reactivating old ones. How about starting a simple action plan to establish or reactivate one weak tie per day? this article If you have read this far you must have found something in this article which was either useful or thought provoking. If you know some people who you think will be interested why not send it on to them (these are strong ties because you know them well enough to think they might be interested). Why not also send it to some of your weak ties? That way you could reactivate some weak ties and also spread this article further afield. comments If you have any comments on this article please email them to me. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com This material is Copyright Treepax Ltd.(2008) but you are free to read and distribute it as you wish (including on your website and newsletters) as long as: 1. you do not sell it or make financial gain by using it 2. you do not alter any part of this article (including this message) 3. you do not use it it any way that reflects badly upon the author If you like this article more are available in my newsletter which you can sign up for by clicking on: www.treepax.com/newsletter |
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