The Best Ideas May Be Hiding Across the Street

 

We often imagine that great ideas come from unusually creative people.

Someone has a flash of inspiration. A brilliant new idea appears. Everyone else wonders, “Why didn't I think of that?”

But research on social networks suggests something different.

Sometimes the person with the best idea isn't necessarily the most creative person in the room. It may simply be the person who has been in more than one room.

Marc J. Dunkelman, author of "The Vanishing Neighbor," recently told me about a fascinating 2004 blog post by Bruce Hoppe titled “Good Ideas at Raytheon and Big Holes in Our Own Backyard.” The article discusses research by sociologist Ronald Burt and what he called “structural holes.”

The idea has important implications not only for businesses but also for neighborhoods and communities.

The Raytheon Experiment

Burt studied managers at Raytheon and asked them to submit their best ideas for improving business operations. Company executives then evaluated those ideas.

An interesting pattern emerged.

The highest-rated ideas tended to come from managers who had relationships outside their immediate work groups.

Why? Because those employees were exposed to different people, different approaches and different ways of solving problems.

Burt described the gaps between disconnected groups as structural holes.

Imagine two departments in the same organization that rarely communicate. One department may have already solved a problem the other department is struggling with.

The missing ingredient isn't necessarily another meeting, consultant or strategic plan. It may simply be a person who knows people in both groups.

That person becomes a bridge. And bridges carry ideas.

Innovation Is Often Importing, Not Inventing

One of the most interesting insights from Burt's research is that innovation frequently isn't about inventing something completely new.

It is about moving an existing idea somewhere new.

Something ordinary in one organization, neighborhood or community can seem revolutionary somewhere else.

That immediately makes me think about my work with communities.

I frequently attend conferences, visit communities, teach workshops and talk with people doing interesting things around the country. Again and again, I discover an idea that makes me think: “We could do that in Missouri.”

Increasingly, I hear from people in other states who encounter something we are doing through Missouri Good Neighbor Week or the Engaged Neighbor Program and say: “We could do that here.”

That is exactly how ideas travel. The innovation isn't always creating something from scratch.

Sometimes innovation means seeing something that works in one place and recognizing its potential somewhere else.

Communities Have Structural Holes Too

Burt's research was conducted inside a corporation, but I think the lesson may be even more important for communities.

Every community contains groups (circles) of people who rarely interact.

Business owners may know other business owners. Same for church members who know other church members, teachers who know teachers, nonprofit leaders who know nonprofit leaders, and even neighborhood leaders who know other neighborhood leaders. Within each circle there may be strong relationships.

But there can still be enormous gaps between the circles.

Those are our community's structural holes. And that means one of the most valuable things we can do for a community is connect people across them.

We Need More Weavers

Today we sometimes call these people connectors or weavers.

They aren't necessarily the people with the biggest titles. They may not run an organization or chair a committee. They simply know people. More importantly, they introduce people who should know each other.

A weaver hears someone describe a problem and says: “You need to meet Susan.”

Or: “Another neighborhood tried something like that.”

Or: “The church down the street has a room you might be able to use.”

Or: “I know someone at the school who would love this idea.”

Those sentences may sound insignificant. They aren't. They are how social capital moves through a community.

The Danger of Staying in Our Circles

There is another important lesson here.

Our social networks naturally become comfortable.

We tend to spend time with people who share our interests, professions, backgrounds and organizations. Burt's research suggests that tightly connected groups can be excellent for trust, but they can also become increasingly similar in how they think. Reaching outside our usual networks exposes us to different information and different ways of solving problems.

That should challenge every community organization.

Who isn't at our table or what generation is missing? Who don't we know? What organization across town are we disconnected from? What neighborhood rarely interacts with another neighborhood?

What ideas might already exist somewhere else that could solve the problem we are trying to solve?

Sometimes the answer to a community problem isn't another program. Sometimes we simply need another relationship.

Neighboring Builds Bridges

This is one reason I believe neighboring matters far beyond friendliness.

When you introduce yourself to the person across the street, you aren't merely learning another name. You are creating another connection in the community's social network.

That neighbor knows people you don't know. They have experiences you have not had, they belong to organizations you do not, and the possess different knowledge.

And you have things they don't have. So the relationship creates a bridge across what previously was a structural hole.

Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of relationships and something important happens. The community becomes better connected.

Information moves faster, resources become easier to discover, people hear about opportunities, more organizations partner, problems become visible sooner, and ideas travel farther.

That is what I call civic infrastructure.

Don't Fill Every Hole

There is an interesting twist to Burt's research.

The goal isn't necessarily for everybody to know everybody.

In fact, Burt's work suggests there can be value in maintaining a mixture of strong relationships within groups and bridges between different groups. The most useful network may be a hybrid, where some relationships that create deep trust and others that provide access to different people and ideas.

That sounds remarkably similar to the distinction between bonding and bridging social capital. We need both.

Bonding relationships give us people who really know us.

Bridging relationships introduce us to people who are different from us.

Healthy communities require strong circles and bridges between those circles.

Look for the Holes

Perhaps one of the most useful questions a community leader can ask is this: Where are the holes in our community's relationships?

Instead of seeing those gaps only as weaknesses, Burt's research offers another perspective. They are opportunities.

Every gap represents the possibility of a new relationship. Every new relationship creates the possibility of exchanging information or discovering a new idea.

And every new idea creates the possibility of strengthening the community.

The next great idea for your neighborhood may already exist. It may be in another neighborhood, another organization or another town or state.

The challenge isn't always inventing it.

Sometimes we simply need someone willing to cross the street, make the introduction and build the bridge.

WRITTEN BY

David L. Burton

For more information, visit the Engaged Neighbor website. Take our pledge and become part of a movement! Or subscribe to our newsletter. Access some of the research documents written by David Burton, the author of this blog. Or better yet, purchase one of his books off Amazon. Contact David L. Burton via email at dburton541@yahoo.