Page 53 - Complexity Perspective_Neat

simple or enormously complicated networks. Such (macro)
aggregations have structural features and dynamics that are common
to almost all kinds of network (e.g., electrical grids). These structural
features have been elaborated in an enormous literature covering
many study disciplines.

From a business perspective there are three key ideas:

● The Idea of Ties. (Granovetter, 1973): This idea is important
as it relates to the spreading of information.

Strong ties include close friends and colleagues; these people
tend to move in the same circles, so the information they receive
overlaps considerably limiting the transfer of new information.

Weak social ties such as acquaintances are the dominant form
of transmission of information as they move in different circles
and bring novel information. These are termed weak as they are
characterized by minimal emotional intensity resulting from the
low time being devoted to them.

A special case of weak ties is hubs. Hubs are nodes with large
numbers of weak ties. Hubs are important in information
dissemination because of their large number of links. Hubs form
naturally and the distribution of sizes of hubs follows a power
law with a few very large hubs and a long tail of smaller nodes
with few (often string) links. Hubs are the basis of search engine
algorithms that measure the importance of a node by the

number of links it possesses.

Absent ties lack substantial significance and so pass no
meaningful information. Examples are "nodding" relationships
between people living on the same street, or the "tie", for
example, to a frequent vendor one would buy from.
Furthermore, the fact that two people may know each other by
name does not necessarily qualify the existence of a weak tie. If
their interaction is negligible the tie may be absent.

● Structural holes in the network: (Burt, 1992). The idea of
structural holes talks to the informational advantage enjoyed by
a person that bridges two or more tight social groupings each

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