Social Capital Mentor

Deep Networking - Work Together With Others

My brother Charles recently called me to talk through a small, but common, networking dilemma: there were two networking-related events on the same night and he was trying to decide which one to go to. He’s getting into the green-building industry and both events would expose him to people in that field. He was leaning [...]

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Towards a More Social Engagement Model

Are we moving towards “a new model of engagement for businesses?” Is business becoming more social? Joshua-Michele Ross—in his great article at Forbes.com—says yes to both. It’s one of my favorite articles on the “social” part of business. …we are moving increasingly toward a new model of engagement for businesses, that is, (you guessed it!) social. [...]

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It’s a Lot Like Graphic Design

I was at a big conference in Boston this week (CHI 2009). At the opening-night banquet I sat with a bunch of graduate students from the University of Michigan’s School of Information. They mentioned something that got me thinking: graphic design is a lot like Social Capital. There’s a student competition every year for undergrads and [...]

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Preparing for a Crisis

You won’t hear “social capital”, “networking”, or “business lunch” anywhere in Jean Chatzky’s clip from the Today show. I’m including it for a one main reason: all the suggestions that Jean makes about preparing for a crisis have to do with long-term thinking, not short-term, which is how we want you to think about developing [...]

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30% More Productive

I was on an airplane a few days ago reading an article in the February issue of Harvard Business Review (How Social Networks Network Best, by Alex Pentland). Alex is the director of human dynamics research at the MIT Media Lab and has been studying the way teams of business people work together. Here’s some mildly [...]

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Reminder from HBR: Stay Active & Organized

We’ve said it before, and I’m going to keep saying it: You’ve got to stay active in a downturn. David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter wrote a great article in the February issue of Harvard Business Review titled Seize Advantage in a Downturn. It’s about developing a corporate assessment and action plan for dealing with the [...]

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What We Can Learn from Great Presenters

Saturday night a bunch of us were hanging out in the beautiful Peabody hotel lobby after a full day of attending, presenting, socializing, and networking at the IA Summit in Memphis. A new friend, Kristi, said “I felt sorry for our presenter. Her talk was good, but we kept hearing all this laughter coming through [...]

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I’m Going to Memphis

I love conferences. The apathetic, pessimistic, burned out folks stay home. Cool by me. I’d rather spend time with the motivated and energized. It’s a great way to meet people, connect, get inspired. I’m going to Memphis for the IA Summit, as part of my Awasu Design work. Richard Anderson and I are running a working [...]

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It’s the Social, not the Media

“Social media” is all the rage these days. Facebook updates, Twitter “tweets”, and LinkedIn… links? I’m a big fan, but to be totally clear: these tools, just like email, webinars, and others are just tools. They don’t produce business for you. Human beings are social creatures Alexandra Levit says it quite well in today’s article in Forbes.com: Finally, [...]

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Is Social Capital Saving Jobs at Beth Israel Deasoness Medical Center?

It’s pretty easy to be pleased with all the key players in this story; from Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, to the countless lower-wage hospital employees who make patients comfortable, to all the rest of the hospital staff at Beth Israel who recently applauded Mr. Levy when he asked them [...]

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