Thanks to Sean Silverthorne's post, Facebook in Pinstripes, I came across an interesting post by Andrew McAfee, an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, about why social networks, like Facebook, can promote innovation. In his article, The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and Their Leaders, McAfee explains that when people with "strong ties" look for a solution to a problem, they may be looking within the same network of friends. If that network doesn't have the answer, they're out of luck.

On the other hand, if they go to people they have "weak ties" with, like on a Facebook group, they open themselves up to new groups of people with new ideas:

"A tidy summary of SWT’s conclusion is that strong ties are unlikely to be bridges between networks, while weak ties are good bridges. Bridges help solve problems, gather information, and import unfamiliar ideas. They help get work done quicker and better. The ideal network for a knowledge worker probably consists of a core of strong ties and a large periphery of weak ones. Because weak ties by definition don’t require a lot of effort to maintain, there’s no reason not to form a lot of them (as long as they don’t come at the expense of strong ties)."

The whole post is definitely worth reading!

Image Credit: The Knot: An Installation 8 by Lisa Yarost.