Many years ago when I was a researcher in a European think-tank, I wanted to develop an automatic way to map information flows within large organisations. The basic idea was to data mine the corporate email system to discover how new information spreads through the organisation - and along the way map 'unofficial' communities of practice. I never got there because I was distracted by an offer to work in Boston on an internet project at MIT's Sloan School and the Lotus Development Corporation.
I've kept this interest in mapping information waves and I was interested to come across the recent work of
Jon Kleinberg, Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University in the US. Together with a couple of assistants, he has tracked 1.6 million online news sites, including 20,000 mainstream media sites and a vast array of blogs, over the three-month period leading up to the 2008 presidential election. Analysing the 90 million articles has revealed the pulse (he calls a 'heartbeat') pattern of handoffs between blogs and mainstream media:
I wonder if a similar mapping of information flow within an organisation would lead to better analytic use?
My theory is that delivering analytics in 'harmony' with the natural 'heartbeat' of an organisation's other information flows will lead to more timely and targeted insight - resulting in better decision making. How you would achieve this is a very interesting problem. Is anyone working on a solution?
Joanna, The talking piotns plugin looks very interesting I'll definitely be checking that out. Like Cath, I've been trying to use comments as a jumping off point for new posts. Recently I did a rather lengthy post highlighting recent commenter ideas (I think the idea came from you!) and it was really interesting. BTW who are those handsome looking gentlemen at the top of your post? Brad Shorrs last blog post..
Posted by: Velkis | Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 10:04 PM