Social Engineering
Bruno Giussani: “The individual is the new group. The most successful social applications today are those that allow individuals to pursue what they’re interested in, and then deal with affiliation and participating in markets”
Kevin Gamble: “Everyone is pursuing the Holy Grail of hyper-productive social networks. We all want some of that magic for our organizations. Here‘s the rub, I don‘t think you can engineer it. I think you can create the conditions: e.g. being more transparent, flatter, open. You can provide the mechanisms, e.g. the underlying technologies. I don‘t believe you can engineer actual communities, however, and by trying you may be doing more harm than good.”
Sam Ruby: “Jon Udell labels this phenomenon, manufactured serendipity. Serendipity is all about making fortunate discoveries by accident. You can’t automate accidental discoveries, but you can manufacture the conditions in which such events are more likely to occur.“