Looking to Become More Innovative? Consider SNA (Social Network Analysis) First

In his post, "What are the Arts of Innovation?", blogger Andrew Dick of Ensparq does an outstanding job of creating a mash-up of concepts generally related to innovation from a "Strategist's" viewpoint.  For today's post, I'm going to focus on his reference to SNA (Social Network Analysis) in the following quote:

" ... Social network analysis - recently trendy, and surprisingly useful for understanding innovation networks and the like, though I wonder how useful it is for the innovation practitioner.  I think the combination of SNA, system dynamics, and epidemiology would make a pretty potent innovation dynamics toolkit, although I don’t know if that’s out there at the moment."

In response, I offer the following thoughts so as to continue the conversation Andrew has done an outstanding job of creating:

Interesting post, Andrew – in regards to your mention of SNA (Social Network Analysis) as it applies to the general concept of “Innovation”, think beyond the practitioner.

The ‘practitioner’, by definition, is a node within a greater network, likely falling within an innovation cluster (or series of clusters that form a larger network).

SNA allows us to form a network-aware view/visualization of who is partaking in innovation efforts. From there, we can identify how central each member is to a given function or biz unit, etc. Through the map, we may be able to instantly understand why given features and functions (or new products) are not getting from point A to point B. We often see this after M&A activity – the acquiring firm may hold steadfast to ‘how products have always been developed’, thereby leading to a natural tension in regards to innovating. Yes, it’s basic hierarchy versus matrix stuff, but extremely powerful when viewed visually.

Another way to consider SNA (as it relates to innovation), is to have the ability to identify certain nodes/practitioners that ‘should’ be part of cross-functional innovation teams . . . by the very virtue of their network location. For example, if ‘Bob’ is highly ‘between’ Sales, Marketing, and Operations (as he has 2 contacts in Sales, 4 in Marketing, and 3 in Operations), Bob could be selected as a member of the team because there is a high probability that he understands the politics and internal dynamics of each particular group/cluster. In other words, he could be a powerful messenger/boundary spanner by virtue of his location in several sub-clusters, not to mention the fact that those with high levels of betweeness are typically more resilient to groupthink than someone who is heavily central to a given cluster.

For an additional wrinkle, consider 'innovation' from a military intelligence standpoint.  Would it be beneficial to have highly 'between' members of our Defense Agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.) collaborating together?  You better believe it . . . especially as we continue to move from a 'Need-to-Know' (Cold War) mentality to a 'Need-to-Share' (War on Terror) mentality as a result of 9/11.

Comments

[Ed Han]

I'm finding this idea positively intriguing. Thank you, esp as I hadn't seen Andrew Dick's original post.

[ViDuJagOss]

Nice post! Companies working with PR and Commnunication tend to focus on influencers or opinion leaders as the ones to focus attention. That is from the perspective of understanding "change" as the outcome of encounters with people with certain capabilities. However, as Duncan Watts and many others have proved, these people tend to have limited influence beyond their own networks and groups. Instead, boundary spanners seem to be critical to create a larger impact on the market or within an organisation. So in a "Need-to-Share" situation we depend on the ones bridging groups and networks. Humans tend to be psychological biased toward "influencers" within the group rather than the "bridges" between groups. Just noted some posts from the Facebook company today, no matter how many friends people have on Facebook, people tend to communicatate with same 10-16 people at all times. Not much innovation going on there, I would say.

[Devremülk]

i like to read your posts. thanks for this one.

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