We’ll see that successful people are great users and generators of weak links. People who thrive have a knack of moving in a variety of circles and are receptive to the implications of distant practices, scraps of information and insights for their own world. They still have their anchors, strong personal relationships that give meaning to their lives, but they also invest time and energy in cultivating and maintaining a large number of weak links. In short, they are superconnectors, and we are about to meet several of them. These are people who have based their success, usually without realising it, on weak links. And they’ll provide many practical ideas for how we might do the same.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SUPERCONNECTORS
Who are the superconnectors, why do they matter, and what is their secret?
For each possible realm of activity…there is likely to emerge a sociometric star.
Stanley Milgram22
If you were a distinguished mathematician in the second half of the twentieth century, you’d probably have had a knock on your front door at some point. You’d be greeted by a gaunt, grey-haired man wearing spectacles and a rumpled suit. Clutching a suitcase containing most of his worldly goods, this academic vagabond would have stepped confidently into your space and announced himself with the words, ‘My brain is open.’
This was good news. You were being invited to collaborate with the world’s greatest serial mathematician. True, you’d have to put him up in the spare room, and work round the clock, as he fuelled himself with endless cups of strong coffee and amphetamines. Such were the modest requirements of Paul Erdös, a Hungarian who took his doctorate at Manchester University, and became a professor at Princeton at the age of twenty-five. Eventually he abandoned his home and spent the rest of his life travelling from campus to campus, from collaborators’ homes to scientific conferences, searching out the most interesting problems and colleagues.
By the time he died in 1996, Erdös had become the most prolific author–or usually co-author–of mathematical articles in history. He ended up with 1475 articles to his name, and had 511 different collaborators. His contributions spanned many fields, including number theory, combinatorics, probability, set theory, mathematical analysis, and even the beginnings of the network science that lies at the root of this book. He won many prizes, but perhaps the legacy he would have valued most was the game mathematicians began to play. ‘What is your Erdös number?’ they would demand of each other. If you had published with Erdös it was 1; if you’d published with someone who’d published with Erdös, it was 2; and so on. As mathematicians are wont to do, someone eventually worked out the Erdös numbers for everyone in the Math Reviews database. The median Erdös number was 5 and the mean 4.7–truly a mathematical small world. Everyone was joined to everyone else through this single, remarkable man, a superconnector who used a large and fluid network to advance human knowledge.
After selling his small software and media ventures, Andreas Meyer took a sabbatical to travel the world. He recorded his sights and experiences with a camera, and so became interested in photography. The creative and reflective part of this hobby was enjoyable, but it was the social part–meeting people to explore a mutual passion–that was the real draw for him. Andreas began to see photography primarily as a means to express and satisfy one’s social nature, and he’s stayed remarkably true to this vision through the years. He’s made many great friends and a large number of friendly acquaintances through his pastime, but, more unusually, he has also devised a way to create many thousands of friendships for others.
As the Internet boomed in the late 1990s, Andreas was well placed to understand and experiment with it. He’d been an early fan of the Web, and he knew how to write computer code. In 2000 he returned to Cologne, Germany, from his travels. Thinking about what to do next, he looked no further than his new hobby. Could he create a truly vibrant social community around photography?
He set up a website called Fotocommunity, a place where keen amateurs could exhibit their best photos alongside those of other serious photographers. The site was designed to promote the sharing of criticism, encouragement and advice between members. The number of photos one could exhibit was limited to make the act of doing so scarce and valuable. Members were encouraged to contact each other, explore the entire body of someone’s work, choose and show favourites, and nominate and vote the very best into a special gallery. Most importantly, face-to-face meetings such as workshops, regular get-togethers and photo-expeditions were organised through the site’s public calendar.
Photographers really got behind the idea, and the site grew steadily. Volunteers stepped forward to help new members acclimatise, to flag up offensive material, and to help with customer service. There was a sense that the community itself truly owned and operated the site. A quality ethos arose, helped by the limitation on entries, which promoted the best. There was a tremendous amount of critiquing–an average of ten comments per photo–so it didn’t become a repository for holiday snaps; and members strove to earn kudos within the community through peer review and having their work elevated to the top gallery.
Then something unusual happened, particularly for the Web that we’ve come to know as the land of free service. The site had initially supported itself with advertising, but when the Internet bubble burst revenues dried up and the site began losing money. To save the business, Andreas asked members to pay if they wanted to submit a greater number of photos for review. Heavy users did just that, and this has been the company’s profitable revenue model ever since.
Today, Fotocommunity forms part of the bedrock of the German photographic community. If you want to associate with serious photographers, you go to this website, because that’s where they all are. It’s in the top 200 German sites by traffic, with 400,000 users per month and 5 million viewers. But Andreas is most proud of the beauty of the 3 million reviewed pictures, the 3000 real-world get-togethers that are arranged by the site each year, and the wonderful connections he has forged for himself and like enthusiasts.
You’ll find Peter Harding forty miles south-west of London, off the A30 arterial road, down a narrow country lane that leads to a jumble of old farm buildings. On a sunny day, as you cross into the shade, you become aware of a chaotic landscape, thick with dust and cobwebs. Ahead of you are disembowelled engines, pyres of desiccated rubber strips and faded chrome, and the exoskeletal remains of ancient vehicles, like hollow skins shed by long-forgotten mechanised beasts. A fluorescent glow beckons you into a cavernous barn, which is just a little tidier. Your eye is drawn to a gleaming metallic shape, sinuous and streamlined. It seems strangely foreign, exotic and compelling. This is a 1957 Aurelia B20, built by Lancia, once the grande dame of the Italian car industry. Lancia, whose glory has long since faded, designed and made some of the most elegant GT cars of the mid-twentieth century.
Peter formerly ran an air-freight business, but a quarter-century ago he quit to pursue his passion. After taking three years to restore his own Aurelia, he knew that working with these cars would make him happy for the rest of his life. Although he had no formal engineering or mechanical training, he set up shop in the barn and found customers almost immediately. He has been busy ever since. The hours and the demands of the cars’ owners can be unpredictable, the work is dirty by nature, and the barn is freezing in winter, but Peter doesn’t care.