Last night I spoke at a NESTA event called Collaborate to Innovate, which was related to their new Connecting Innovation programme.

The other speaker was Sociologist Ron Burt from the University of Chicago, who gave a fascinating talk on his specialist subject (and the topic of his book), Structural Holes which posits both
a) that creativity is an import/export game (that is, creativity has got more to do with situation than individual) and
b) that people who exist in the intersection of social worlds (i.e. those with many structural holes in their networks) have a greater likelihood of having good ideas.

His theory is outlined in a great New York Times article from May 2004 - Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outisde Your Group, the text of which has been handily republished by Danah Boyd here:

People with cohesive social networks, whether offices, cliques or industries, tend to think and act the same, he explains. In the long run, this homogeneity deadens creativity. As Mr Burt’s research has repeatedly shown, people who reach outside their social network not only are often the first to learn about new and useful information, but they are also able to see how different kinds of groups solve similar problems.

I can certainly see how this works in a business context, because looking beyond your own team, department, organisation or even industry can be a great source of creativity and inspiration. How often, after all, have we heard the same ideas (or the same group type of ideas) come from the same team? Breakthrough ideas tend to be ones which are surprising, or which take a different approach completely - Innovation company ?WhatIf! calls this technique “River Jumping”. Burt argues that that different approach can be greatly enhanced or developed by having a different social perspective, one which has been formed by a greater openness in one’s personal social network.

But for years I’ve felt that the same applies to the digital generation - and specifically, people with blogs or other online community ties. Now, I don’t want to make the assertion that all people with blogs are creative genii, but rather that some of the most creative, inspiring, switched on and engaging people I know are those who have been blogging for years. The key here is not their blogs - or the act of publishing or wibbling about one’s cat or breakfast for years - but instead the way they have been able to successfully and mostly effortlessly straddle and navigate several social contexts, while being able to learn, transfer and apply knowledge from one to another. And usually, the transfer has been from the real world to the professional context, and not the other way around. I’ve rarely heard about someone being a better blogger or photographer or IM chat buddy because they’re a product manager, but I hear the inverse with increasing, pleasing frequency.

Take me, for example: I’ve been working at the same company for eight and a half years, in a variety of roles. At the same time, I’ve been publishing a blog for nearly as long, and engaging in virtual/online communities for much longer. So right away, there have been two sides to my approach - two major inputs into my attitude, knowledge, reference points and behaviour. If you like, there have been two Megs - Meg-at-work and Meg-online. And they say that two Megs are better than one, right? ;)

I know that although the blog-Meg and the work-Meg have been kept very (intentionally) distinct for years, there’s no doubt that engaging passionately in this blog (and blogging and social online contexts in general) have made me more knowledgable about life, online, more interested in emerging technologies and more likely to play and experiment with ideas, technologies and features - like tagging, for example. And all that, in turn and quite coincidentally, has made me more valuable to the company I work for.

But let’s be clear about this - I haven’t been engaging in the online social world as part of an extended research project to benefit my company.

No.

I’ve been doing it because this is what I do. And I’m lucky that I’ve been able to define roles within work which allow me to share and apply knowledge and inklings and hypotheses. And I’m lucky that it’s been well-accepted from my colleagues, and that I’ve been in a position to influence thinking and activity about things that I’m passionate about.

Ron Burt says that “The easiest way to feel creative is to find people who are more ignorant than yourself,” and he’s right. It’s much easier to be dazzling when people around you don’t have the same cultural or social reference points.

Here’s a tip for the wise: pub quizzes in Fulham are full of people who work in the music industry, so the music round is always a clean sweep and thus not very interesting. Their shared specialist knowedge creates a level field, so the real competition has to take place in the other rounds, in which it tends to be a case of “who is the least ignorant”. However, the same people entering a different quiz would ace the music round and blow the competition off their barstools - and likewise, a sport, science, geography or literature specialist could probably clean up in the quiz nights of Fulham, if they really wanted.

This is something I’ve seen people I know with blogs be able to do again and again in their professional lives. They have been able to bring in unthought-of perspectives and bricolage skills and an open approach to social communication and experimentation which most of their colleagues can neither understand nor reproduce. Good. That’s the way our social internet revolution continues, moving offline and starting to influence real things, too. And once the rest of the organisation catches up and catches on, then those people - those digital natives, so comfortable on code-switching between their worlds - start to move on, to other challenges, new pub quizzes. It’s interesting to see it happen.

The last couple of years have been especially interesting and weird for me as the two sides of Meg-ness - personal and professional - have blended together, to the point that I’m now being introduced at events like the one last night with both my job title and my blog URL. It’s weird, but it’s good.

So a special hello to anyone who attended the NESTA event last night and has swung by this URL to see what’s going on. If you’re expecting a lot of posts about social media then you may (or may not) be disappointed.

This blog is a digital record of lots of things which occupy my brain - from travel to technology - which means it’s as multifacted and poly-topical as I tend to be, in life as online. It’s not “about” anything, in the same way that I’m not “about” anything: it is (and I am) a construction of lots of things and influences and ideas and cultural and social reference points, over time. It’s a work in progress, a virtual version of my head, a digital approximation of me. That’s why it’s me(ish).

Hello.