Network weaving

June Holley writes this about the economic development work that she and Valdis Krebs have been doing in Ohio. For more background on their methods, see the paper at http://www.orgnet.com/BuildingNetworks.pdf

For the last 20 years, I helped co-create economic networks (see www.acenetworks.org) in Appalachian Ohio, an area with deep and chronic poverty and amazingly little business activity. Since 1982, I was also reading research on transformation in complex systems and trying to apply what I was learning.

What we found was the critical factor leading to transformation--as opposed to viral spreading of ideas--was collaborative projects--or rather a densely woven, ever changing ecosystem of people figuring out what they and their community needed and finding others to join them in doing something about that.

We found that in a well developed regional ecosystem there are thousands of "twosies"--two people doing something together, dozens of small group projects (joint marketing, a farmers market) and several large scale projects (a Kitchen Incubator, a venture fund).

When these projects are seen as experiments--and their innovations and successes and failures are shared widely through what we call a smart network--then the community can move to become self-organizing quite rapidly. It does take Network Weavers--people who take responsibility for the well-being of the network, link people with similar interests, link people across traditional divides, and model the behaviors and values of complex reciprocity and openness. Their ability to model how to use traditional differences and divides to fuel breakthroughs is key to generating transformation.

The result: a very collabortive culture in the region and many, many new and growing businesses that make our region a wonderful place to live and visit!

I've recently retired from ACEnet, and Valdis Krebs and I have develop
very easy to use software and training so that Network Weavers can learn to map, analyze and enhance regional networks and prime the collaboration pump so their community becomes self-organizing.

Have others seen this power of collaborations to transform? Where its
not just about scale or viral spreading, but using the power of inclusive networks to
spread the capacity to self-organize and make breakthroughs.

June Holley
Network Weaver