I am prepping and working on two projects (in addition to client work). One is the KM Cluster in Boston in October (see link on the right of this pae). The KM Cluster’s conversation will be about the value of networks — intrinsic value, business value, the return on investing on the difficult work of network, relationship, and trust building. I just love this story Valdis Krebs posted to SOCNET.

A client of mine is an expert soccer player/coach. He and I had a conversation about soccer games and networks many years ago. We extended the conversation from soccer teams to business teams.

I also noticed network dynamics on my son’s soccer teams. The first team was very cliquish [3] and tended to pass the ball within cliques, even when a player from another clique was open. Needless to say this team always argued, blamed each other, and lost most of their games.

Then my son joined another team of overall less skilled players — but they were all good friends in school. They were pretty evenly skilled and did not have any superstars on the team. Not only was soccer fun now, but they won many more games — even against teams that had a superstar player or two.