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The Endless Chain - Six Levels of Separation
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“The Small World theory, also known as Six Degrees of Separation, goes something like this. A degree of separation is defined as an acquaintance or friend who separates you from someone else. Thus, there are zero degrees of separation between you and your immediate friends or acquaintances. Different people have different ways of defining an acquaintance or friend, but we like the idea that a friend is someone who is in your address book.
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The theory is that there are only six degrees (or levels) of separation between you and everyone else in the world. This is a bit mind-blowing, but the math below shows that it is correct.
The math behind the idea goes something like this.
We assume that a person only knows 100 people, and each of these 100 people knows 50 non-redundant people (nothing to do with unemployment - it simply means there is no duplication of people).
Then each of the 50 people knows another 50 non-redundant people and so on up to six degrees. This multiplies out to be
100 x 50 x 50 x 50 x 50 x 50 = 31.25 x 1010
This is a cool 31 Billion. As most of you will know the entire population of the whole darn world is about 6 Billion, which shows that six degrees of separation is enough to cover the world
So what of it? Well the Six Degrees of Separation idea shows that we are all very closely related to everyone else in the World. Think about it, you are less than six degrees of separation from the Pope.
- Recent research has shown that the type of interconnectivity required making the Six Degrees of Separation idea work relies upon networks that have a small number of random links. In other words, to be well connected, you need to be closely connected to an individual who has links to groups that are very far removed from yourself.
- So, if you live in a remote Patagonian Ubbie-Dubbie speaking village, the amount of redundancy in your immediate friends is very high - everyone in the village knows each other but not many know anyone outside the village.
- However, in this increasingly interconnected world this type of isolation is rare. Often we will know a single individual who works abroad, or works for someone who has a high-ranking job in Government and bingo, you can easily connect to most people in the World”.
An “Affinity Network” is a pool of people who have something in common like those who have attended the same University, members of a Social Fraternity or a Professional association. Often “Affinity Networks” Charter flights to travel together to tour together.
Everyone one of us and everyone you know is a walking “Affinity Network”. We are members of a family, have grown up in neighborhoods, attended schools and churches, played on teams and in groups, participated in special interests, activities and hobbies. We studied specific majors and worked at jobs with others of similar training.
Sophisticated algorithms help judge how closely various folks are linked to others by measuring such things as e-mail and phone traffic, weighted by such variables as how rapidly an e-mail is responded to, or by determining if someone in our company is a physical neighbor of someone on a target company's payroll. Yup, a little freaky ... but that's no surprise by 2006! Tom Peters
The number of people we have interacted with and mutually have knowledge about is enormous. The combined number of connections is staggering. That is why it is said that we are six phone calls from anyone on the planet. If we wanted to talk to the President we know someone, who knows someone …who can get us to the President.
What does this mean in this business model? To build an organization that services millions of people with millions of products and services is very possible and in fact the pieces needed to do so are all in place! From the Zip Code(s) you own you will be able to build business around the world.
That is the purpose of reading Acres of Diamonds, bloom where you are planted! The business you build of satisfied clients that is under your nose will lead to an international empire
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