Our social networks may, indeed, be searchable in the sense that we are connected by a relatively small number of social links.  Nevertheless, the acts of identifying and engaging peers and other sources of entrepreneurial expertise in conversations that translate into learning depend upon one’s recognition of a knowledge gap, the perceived value of that knowledge, and the prospective respondent's incentives.   Notwithstanding advances in communications and information technologies, social search strategies and response has a lot to do with perceived social distance and that, it seems, is still largely a function of geographic proximity and occupational affinity.  Information technology offers underutilized potential, but for now its primary value seems to lie in facilitating conversations among people who already know each other and, to a lesser degree, longer range searches for sources of highly valued expertise.

I couple of years ago, I launched Pioneer Entrepreneurs based upon a host of assumptions, including the following:

·        The creation of jobs and wealth in a community is, to a material degree, a function of entrepreneurial success.

·        Entrepreneurial success, in turn, is the result of learning about (a) what your customers want and need and (b) what business models can satisfy those wants and needs sufficiently profitably.  As Jeff Shuman and Jan Twombly say, entrepreneurship is about “Getting smart fast for short dollars.”  It’s easy to say, but very hard to do.

·        Given the requisite pace, entrepreneurial learning is largely a function of being able to converse with peers and other domain experts on a timely basis.  As Kennedy and Eberhart assert in Swarm Intelligence, “Human intelligence results from social interaction.”  Vicarious learning is a particularly valuable strategy in the face of the ambiguity and time constraints that shape the entrepreneurial experience.

·        Entrepreneurs located outside of the urban mainstream are likely to need to converse with resources outside of their communities, given the relative dearth of local expertise.

·        Internet-based and other technologies and methodologies are reducing the cost of search and communication.

Given the preceding, I set out to learn the conditions under which the application of communications technologies and peer learning methodologies could offset the historical disadvantage of geographic isolation.  Organized as a (not just) for profit, the market for Pioneer Entrepreneurs services would provide feedback regarding my hypotheses.

On the one hand, I was encouraged by evidence that there was an increasing amount of entrepreneurial life on the economic frontier animated by imported human and social capital (e.g., Greg Gianforte of RightNow Technologies).  With nascent growth companies sprouting up in all sorts of unexpected places, I anticipated a growing need for knowledge and a concurrent need to transcend geography.

However, I was sobered by the insights of John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, who noted in The Social Life of Information, “digital technologies are adept at maintaining communities already formed.  They are less good at making them.”  Eminent sociologist Mark Granovetter offered his gentle skepticism when he wrote in an email to me, “Most networks we know about grew out of physical proximity or snowballing of various kinds. Whether they can be productively created and managed in the absence of a more 'natural' origin is a very important question.”

Two years into the experiment, I offer the following observations:

·        Technology and networking methodologies (such as peer roundtables) can indeed enhance learning by increasing our awareness of others’ expertise, decreasing the cost of interaction, and increasing the productivity of conversations.

·        Notwithstanding advances in networking technologies, however, most people base their social network search strategies on assessments of geographic proximity and occupational affinity.  Why?  Apparently because short to intermediate social distance – as measured along these two primary dimensions – is positively link with one’s ability to identify an appropriate expert and to the chance of a positive response to one’s queries.

·        The effectiveness of communication and collaboration technologies, given the way people actually conduct searches of their social networks, doesn’t necessarily mitigate the “gravitational pull” of geography.  In fact, effective technologies can actually reinforce our tendency to ask questions of our existing network of colleagues.  Per Brown and Duguid: “[O]ne of the most powerful uses of information technology seems to be to support people who do work together directly and to allow them to schedule efficient face-to-face encounters.”

·        Search outside the boundaries of geography and occupation seems to come in to play when the perceived value of the desired expertise is quite high.  Once again, this is consistent with the hypotheses of Brown and Duguid: “People learn in response to need.  When people cannot see the need for what’s being taught, they ignore it, reject it, or fail to assimilate it in any meaningful way.”  If there is no perceived knowledge gap, there is no search for expertise.  As the perceived value of knowledge increases, an entrepreneur will increase his or her search efforts and, concurrently, raise the qualitative standard of success.  In my experience to-date, knowledge value has to be pretty high for the search to reach an “escape velocity” sufficient to break out of the orbit of one’s existing network of fairly close friends and colleagues – notwithstanding the utility of familiar (e.g., email) and emerging (e.g., social networking services such as LinkedIn) information and communications technologies.

The geography of entrepreneurship is changing as transportation, information technologies, and the distribution channels for business services evolve.  Nevertheless, as I noted some three years ago, distance matters less, while local conditions may matter more.

My goal with Pioneer Entrepreneurs is to serve a geographically diverse group.  In that, I don’t have much choice: I live 500 miles from anywhere.  Rather than continue my attempt to provide good quality access and conversation across a rather broad range of business topics, however, I’m likely to be more successful if I focus on providing high quality and highly valued access to a narrower range of expertise.  Given my personal experience, it seems to make sense for me to focus on the domain of entrepreneurial capital.

My personal cycle of learning continues…

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S. Borgatti, R. Cross, Management Science 49, 432 (2003).

J.S. Brown, P. Duguid, The Social Life of Information, Harvard Business School Press (2000).

P. Dodds, R. Muhamed, D. Watts, Science 301, 827 (2003).

J. Kennedy, R. Eberhart, Swarm Intelligence, Morgan Kauffman (2001).

D. Watts, P. Dodds, M. Newman, Science 296, 1302 (2002).

D. Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, W.W. Norton & Co. (2002).

D. White, M. Houseman, Complexity 8, 1, 72 (2002).