Wild thinkers and reliable doers: Fostering Innovation in Networks

It’s an old idea (but still strong I think) that heterogeneity in networks is linked to innovativeness and homogeneity is linked to stability. However, we are not just talking about: What are the networks that produce the wildest, newest, most excitingly buzzing ideas? But: what are the networks, where new ideas actually come to fruition? [...]

Visualizing Networks Online for KM4Dev

I’ve been thinking of an online version of Net-Map for a while now and my first web-based Net-Map training seminar encouraged me to go further in this direction. During the training I basically directed people I couldn’t see to draw paper maps in their own offices on the Philippines or in India, which is not [...]

Early roots of Social Network Analysis

“It may have been possible in the past, for things to have happened in isolation, but from this time forth, the world must be seen as an organic whole, everything affects everything.” (Polibius, born c. 200, Megalopolis, Arcadia, Greece, died c. 118 BC) Steeve Ebener, who uses social network analysis in the context of accessibility [...]

Thought of the day

“The world won’t stop turning, just ’cause I stop pushing” A thought that a lot of us facilitators, world-changers, development activists, drivers of change, researchers for development need to sometimes remember, sit down, hold our faces into the sun, breathe out and have a big piece of cake. And a nice weekend.

Deaf children, agricultural gene-banks and rural mother-and-child health

That’s just a limited choice of the very different issues that my training participants on Wednesday were concerned with. So they drew maps about real and potential cases in developed and developing countries, from the international to the local level. As always, alas, time went too quickly and I wasn’t able to take everything in, [...]

Learning more about Social Network Analsyis

The Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community has a great Wiki which has an interesting introduction on Social Network Analysis within the field of knowledge management, which is worth checking out, if you want to learn more of the background of the approach.

Integrating research and governance

Sounds great. But how do you do it? How can we as researchers for development do projects that have an impact on governance in the countries we work in? Or, is there a problem in this question already, as it sounds like: First we do research, then we go and have an impact. Should the [...]

Podcast on Maize and Chicken in Ethiopia

“Wow, we learned more about chicken than we ever asked for…” my colleague David Spielman joked after a week of Net-Mapping poultry and maize innovation systems in Ethiopia. You can listen to the (more serious) rest of the discussion by clicking on the media player below (or here) . The project is still in progress, [...]

Looking for free and easy SNA software

I use Visualyzer for visualizing and analyzing my Net-Maps and I love it. But while there is a free trial version, in the end it is a software that you have to purchase. As I want to further spread SNA literacy in developing countries, I am looking for free software that is at least as [...]

Give and take

I am so excited! By posting the invitation to our Net-Map training on the email lists of MandE (Rick Davies’ great Monitoring and Evaluation platform) and KM4Dev (Knowledge Management for Development) I have spurred an absolutely unexpected wave of reactions. We offer the option to participate in the workshop online and I have received applications [...]