76. Project managing network effects 🔗
June 21, 2021
In which I ask whether you can project-manage a network effect from a position of strength — connecting OODA loops, potential field theory, and seasonal harvest cycles into a speculative framework for top-down catalysis of emergent dynamics in controlled networks.
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When a proto-network is strongly under your control/influence (eg network of stores you can release a product in, large group of employees you can send a prompt to, fans of a movie franchise…), how do you trigger a network effect?
Can you project manage a network effect?
Can you project manage a network effect?
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Trying to “go viral” is a bottom-up guerrilla thing. What’s top-down equivalent when you’re asymmetrically strong?
Terms like rollout, deploy, cascade etc exist but point to command-and-control linear scaling alternatives to network effects rather than a network effect per se.
Terms like rollout, deploy, cascade etc exist but point to command-and-control linear scaling alternatives to network effects rather than a network effect per se.
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I’m trying to think of examples. I’m guessing DNS propagation is a bit of an example.
You may or may not know the network structure, and that has effects. For eg you may offer 2 choices of computers A and B to employees, and you could negotiate bulk discounts if you knew…
You may or may not know the network structure, and that has effects. For eg you may offer 2 choices of computers A and B to employees, and you could negotiate bulk discounts if you knew…
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… but individual surveys ahead of time don’t work because word-of-mouth influence.
Can you influence that if you can’t force a choice?
A somewhat realistic example is Pfizer vs Moderna in the US. Most people could figure out how to get the one they wanted. They chose via WoM.
Can you influence that if you can’t force a choice?
A somewhat realistic example is Pfizer vs Moderna in the US. Most people could figure out how to get the one they wanted. They chose via WoM.
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A “personal network effect” is how you arrange a workspace to trigger network effects in your brain (“inspiration”). A kitchen, workshop, writer’s desk, or painter’s studio should have a complete enough catalytic surface that “idea —> network effect —-> outcome” happens.
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A good metaphor is supercooled or superheated water. Small dust particle will trigger phase change to ice or steam.
So managing a network effect = detecting/creating critical states and adding minimal trigger events.
So managing a network effect = detecting/creating critical states and adding minimal trigger events.
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Diff between top-down and bottom-up is you can probably create the conditions rather than waiting to detect and exploit them.
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This is basically the OODA loop stated as a graph-theory problem. Create a positive network effect for yourself, and a negative one for adversary. Get lucky yourself, make them unlucky. Latter is a traditional bottom-up network effect, but former is the more top-down kind.
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Related... thread on project management and why it gets in the way of this stuff. If you can do what this thread posits, what's left over will be like network effects management.
53. Automating project management https://t.co/Agcls3dwYK
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In general, we need potential field theories of network dynamics that makes OODA usable as something more than an esoteric mandala to stare at till you get enlightened. Both these threads are me speculating about turning a philosophy into a technology through partial automation.
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It's kinda funny, but the bete noire of Boydian conflict theory, network-centric warfare theory, is kinda what I'm getting at here. In its original form, it's obvious why OODA and NCW were at odds. It's an evil-twins relationship.
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NCW tried to do with a sledgehammer and brute-force technology what OODA implicitly and unconsciously assumes is the soul of human skill. They tried to automate the wrong thing.
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In quoted PM thread, I posit a 3-layer thing, and the trick is to automate the middle. NCW tried to automate the top and bottom
My working hypothesis is that project management is the "caring" layer in a 3-layer management pyramid that goes
Truth (long-term, enduring, >1y)
Caring (medium-term transient, > 1 week)
Pleasure (short-term transient < 1 day)
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To take a time view of the interplay between network effects, potential fields, OODA loops, and project management... consider the dominance of all those things in your life in a given calendar year, January to December, due to "seasons" of civilized life...
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January: high potential energy (PE), medium project management energy (PME), low network effects (NE), low OODA momentum (kinetic energy, KE).
Feb-April: PE goes down, PME goes up, peaking at tax season, NE and KE are still dead in the water.
Feb-April: PE goes down, PME goes up, peaking at tax season, NE and KE are still dead in the water.
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May -- July: PME down, NE up, PE constant, KE low but starting to develop if you're lucky.
Aug: sudden "wall"... everything crashes
Sept-Oct: if you're lucky, PM low, PE --> KE flowing, NE leveling off. This is the most productive couple of months.
Aug: sudden "wall"... everything crashes
Sept-Oct: if you're lucky, PM low, PE --> KE flowing, NE leveling off. This is the most productive couple of months.
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Nov: PME starts ramping again due to budget/planning season, KE slows as you start wrapping up and trying to "deliver" from an organic momentum/network process that isn't suited to "deliverables" so you have to kinda kill it to deliver.
Dec: Everything gets killed again
Dec: Everything gets killed again
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Notice how shockingly similar this is to the seasonal harvest cycle! There's something to that analogy. Sow = potential, harvest = deliver. Network effect = rains at the right time to promote growth. OODA = managing a healthy crop through growth season.