Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
search far from the target likely i nds itself trapped on a lower peak. In contrast, the
single-peaked landscape that comes with independent components allows both parties
to succeed in receiving and building on the source knowledge through local search.
The highly rugged landscape produced by extreme interdependence meanwhile stymies
both parties thoroughly. (For a more formal treatment, see the simulation in the
Appendix.)
Social networks and template access
The quality of an actor's access to the template may depend on many factors. One crucial
factor is the nature of the actor's social relations, which provide conduits through which
valuable information travels (Hägerstrand, 1953; Homans, 1950). In particular, we claim
that the quality of an actor's access to a template declines with social distance - that
is, the number of nodes that separate the actor from the source of the knowledge in a
social network. Direct, single-step connections provide the most obvious and valuable
links between inventors and those attempting to receive and build on knowledge because
they permit two-way communication. The recipient can therefore interactively query the
original source of the knowledge to correct errors or to i ll gaps in the original transmis-
sion.
4
Short, indirect paths - for example with one or two intervening steps - can also provide
benei cial access to the template, as even second-hand information provides important
clues about how to reconstruct and build on new knowledge. Mutual acquaintances may
also allow for direct communication with the source if they will introduce and vouch
for a potential knowledge recipient (Burt, 1992). Moreover, actors removed by only a
few steps from the knowledge source will share more background knowledge, a larger
proportion of specialized language, and a wider range of beliefs with the source (for
a review, see McPherson et al., 2001). All of these facilitate high-i delity transmission
(Arrow, 1974; Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Durkheim, 1912). The quality of template
access, however, undoubtedly declines rapidly as the number of actors between the inno-
vator and the would-be receiver increases; as in the game of telephone, each step in the
path between the two parties of ers an opportunity for errors and omissions to creep into
the transmission.
The previous subsection argued that superior access to the template creates the
greatest advantage in knowledge dif usion with knowledge of intermediate complexity
(interdependence). Combining that idea with the notion that social proximity provides
superior access to the template, we arrive at the central proposition of our chapter:
Hypothesis: In attempts to receive and build on knowledge, actors who are socially close
to the source of the knowledge have the greatest advantage over distant actors when the
knowledge is of intermediate interdependence
.
In sum, we view knowledge dif usion as a search to receive and build on an ef ective
recipe. Recipients socially proximate to the source of the knowledge have superior,
though still imperfect, access to the original recipe. This advantage in access trans-
lates into higher i delity reproduction that benei ts the actor most signii cantly when
the ingredients of the recipe display moderate interdependence. Simple recipes spread
through the social network thoroughly, placing recipients both near and far on equal
