In Linked, Albert-László Barabási, the nation’s foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previously thought. Barabási shows that grasping a full understanding of network science will someday allow us to design blue-chip businesses.
I had a great read from this book and it’s amazing how nature and humans (and businesses) have so few differences and many similiarities, on how the law of nature govern the structure and evolution of all the complex systems around us.
Just like nature, the construction of graphs and networks are a key part to our understanding of the complex world around us. Small changes in a node will open up a totally different (sometimes, unexpected) world for us.
Links (bridges, contracts, business, personal and family relationships etc.) connect nodes. The fascinating part here is that the more links to add to nodes, the more vibrant and diverse the community (interaction of nodes) will become even while you might have the same absolute # of nodes.
As the # of links increases, the # of nodes that gets left out decreases exponentially, which is made me think of the importance of social fabrics in any given society beyond just quantative measures. But equally as important is that each node needs at least 1 link to have that inter-node interactions.
Clustering and small world networks are extremely important characteristics. These characteristics help show that week links such as acquaintances help make the network more robust more efficient and more interconnected with fewer links. Take advantage of this in your life by maintaining many weak ties which can expose you to new groups and new information. These dense clusters are considered hubs “connectors” and destroy the random world theory. They are so well connected that they shorten the distance on average between nodes
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Which is interesting because I have been reading a possible macro shift (I am subscribed to 20-30 VC daily/weekly/monthly thought pieces) and most are seeing a shift to the so-called ‘clusting of small world networks’ such as how Poolside.FM created a product for a highly niche community, and as result, has build upon a strong and tight social fabric that allows them to compete with the giants in this space, namely, Spotify, iHeartMedia and the likes.
*Italicize portion means they are not derived from the book itself but it came to me through reading of the book (I suppose it’s a link to the nodes of reading books)
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In the corporate management sense, too much control and organization slows things down today where power lies in links and ideas. This shifts modern-day organization from hierarchical to web-based. From top-down and linear to decentralized, flexible, and robust. Furthermore, in network-driven structure, you aim for win-win situation, reliance and long-term relationship building which ultimately brings out the vibrancy of ideas and execution in the businesses as noted above, “the fascinating part here is that the more links to add to nodes, the more vibrant and diverse the community (interaction of nodes) will become even while you might have the same absolute # of nodes.”
Intersection notepad 