LotusSphere: Insights from Andrew McAfee

Image by Berkman Center for Internet & Society via Flickr

 Andrew McAfee took the stage at LotusSphere this morning to share his insights, based upon research he and his colleagues have performed.  I wanted to share these with you, I hope you find them useful. 

• Weak ties are very important.

It is often not your closest friends that have the biggest influence in your social network.  Instead, it is often the more distant ties, the weaker ones, that through the power of collaboration and community rise to the top.  

• Crowds can be very wise.

While “experts” clearly still add real value, the wisdom of the crowds can often yield the same value at a much lower cost. 

• With more eyeballs, more bugs are shallow

Andrew was primarily speaking to the power of open source software development.  Research shows that the size of the community working on the project is important, but less important than the diversity of viewpoints in this community.  The diversity brings different views, creates dialogs, and ultimately leads to better solutions.  

• There are real diamonds in the social data mine

Yes, social networks and communities can get extremely noisy.  However, there is real value to be pulled out of these sources.  Analytics are critical.  

• Being social benefits individuals

People that are more social have deeper networks to draw upon for knowledge, for insights.  These are the people capable of solving larger problems and are often the ones most capable of surviving economic downtowns (they have a broader personal network to draw upon).  

While not backed by research, not yet anyway, Andrew feels that being social not only benefits individuals, but also benefits enterprises.  From my perspective, not Andrew’s, I would argue that the case studies and interviews that I have done, as well as those done by thousands of others, demonstrate the power of these solutions.  There are risks to be managed but the rewards are clear. 

John