Understanding the social networks in your organisation is central to increasing innovation and making the most of mass communication and technology, including social media.

Drake Baer, co-author of Everything Connects, writes:

“Ideas are like germs: they don’t diffuse through populations of people at random; they make their way through networks–that is, the relationships you have with people and the connections they have with others.”

University of Chicago Professor Ron Burt explains the need to broker relationships across social networks.

‘What a broker does is make a sticky information market more fluid. Great ideas will never move if we wait for them to be spoken in the same language.’

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