What a real Network looks like – Thanks Valdis Krebs

What does a real network look like? If we know then we can see if the networks we seek to design and grow are real. Here is how Valdis Krebs sees them and he is for me the Gold Standard.

I think when the history books are written that one of  the Galileo’s of our time – a person who used scientific tools to see a new reality that changes our paradigm – will be Valdis Krebs. While commentators such as myself speculate, Valdis proves the theory with evidence.

This is what the new organization looks like:

Here Valdis uses a real community – (OCL) – on the outside a loose group of “lurkers”. In the Green group – groups of loosely connected sub groups – In the Centre – the Core – a densely connected group that acts like a Sun. It has both mass that acts as a social gravity attracting inwards. It also acts as the sun in that this group also shines energy out that reaches to the far edges of the outer group.

Here is Valdis’ view of the core or as I call it the “Sun”.

Here is another view of what the “Sun” can do – it is an adoption force. Once the Sun is powerful enough, it can shift the paradigm. This may be how people get a disease like flu, adopt a new fashion. Or adopt social media and then a new view of how the world really works – that we are not part of a machine but part of an interconnected universe!

So the implications are clear for me anyway.

Adopting Social Media has nothing to do with the tools. After all the tools are cheap and easy to use. It is all about rewiring the habits and the mindset of people.

If you wish to have your organization adopt this new mindset and hence also its tool kit of social media. You are going to have to create a “Sun” – a densely connected but small group that are committed to the bigger idea that is the energy behind the Sun.

The numbers required for the core are modest. A core of 8 will get you an inner ring of 4,000. A core of 34 will get you an inner ring of 1,300,000. 89 will get you 62,000,000.

The leverage that is possible is incredible when compared to the traditional organization. This is where the costs fall away and the impact goes up.

I will talk more about this and offer you a number of real examples.

But here is the key insight. The Big idea cannot be about the internal needs of the organization. It can’t be about your sales, your profits etc. It cannot be about YOU. For the Sun to access the full energy of people and to spread out to the edge, it must be about US. It must be about the larger group that includes everyone who will be in the community.

More later.