Last week I participated in a Web2Open session where a small group of us formed a round table to discuss the topic of how “social networks make humans smarter.”    The session began with a debate of whether humans actually become smarter just by using social networks.  No one in the group could cite a study that actually proved this claim (if you know of a study please share as a comment below).  Through anecdotal data, however, the group agreed that social networks enable information sharing activities which can then lead to increased intelligence.

I believe social networks are not as much about “making humans smarter” as they are about connecting people to other people who can serve as resources to information.  Social networks are designed to support online connections to strong and weak ties.  Strong ties are people we interact with and often share similar interests (i.e., friends and family).  Weak ties refer to our connections to people where we have casual and infrequent interactions (i.e., friends of friends).  These are the people we do not know well, but trust enough to establish a connection for future reference.  According to research conducted by sociologist Mark Granovetter, the diversity of our weak ties offer resources that are often more beneficial to us than our strong ties.  As Andrew McAfee explains in a blog post, “weak ties might actually be the more important ones for innovation and knowledge sharing.”

Twitter is a great example of an open network of many weak ties.  This architecture enables information to spread at lightning speed across a global network.  For example, Twitter emerged as one of the primary sources of frequent information updates about the Haiti earthquake.  I find it interesting that Twitter is now branding itself as “a real-time information network powered by people” (versus the previous claim to be a mobile social messaging tool).

Social networks offer many benefits to the business world.  For example, a worker with a question that cannot be answered by immediate colleagues (strong ties) can socialize the question through the corporate social network (extending communication to weak ties) in an attempt to crowdsource an answer. Instead of spending hours searching for the answer, the worker can post his or her question publicly on the social network and move on to the next task while waiting to see if anyone else in the network has some insight.  Here, intelligence is derived not from having to know the answer, but in being connected to someone who knows the answer and shares that knowledge with you.

Knowledge sharing emerges as the most compelling driver for using social networks for business purposes, according to an IDC survey of more than 700 U.S. workers.  According to survey respondents, the top two reasons for using social media for business were:

1. To acquire knowledge and ask questions from a community
2. Sharing knowledge and contributing ideas to a community

The act of sharing knowledge through a social network also aids in the location of subject matter experts.  Org charts and titles are frequently outdated, making it difficult for workers to seek out colleagues for help.  Profile information stored in a social network is easier to update, and provides added context to information shared in the activity stream.  The openness of the activity stream of a social network allows all participating members to benefit from the information shared (one-to-many) versus communication sent through an email (one-to-one).  Hence, valuable tacit knowledge is recorded in the social networking platform and shared with the rest of the organization.  Ideally, this real-time information sharing across the network helps reduce redundancy and promote organizational efficiency.

Freeing the flow of information so more people can act on it is a major benefit of social business design.  Social technologies combined with corporate culture that supports information sharing behaviors enables a networked infrastructure.  The networked infrastructure helps organizations break down information silos to create a marketplace for information exchange.  Increasing the collective intelligence of your organization will drive efficiency and competitive advantage.  How networked is your organization?