Not too much to comment here since you covered things very well! Just important to reinforce Ron Burt's notion of 'brokering' to make and maintain social capital as an unfair advantage and to propel strategy. http://colabria.com/structural-holes/ Also, discovery of influence points is often not obvious and counter-intuitive. Expect some frog-kissing to find your princes. Pursue conceptual blending, particularly with customers and prospects, to reveal the absent/weak ties of potent influence points.

Dominic, remember, your beloved state welfare, housing, health, education, etc. CREATES poverty, misfortune, misery and death. Quick question: Which USA state has the largest social programs, the most left governing model, the largest state school system and largest govt transfer welfare payments by far? Right you are! California. Now, which USA state has the highest POVERTY RATE? Exactly correct – California (23.5%). Bravo. You are on a roll. Woo-hoo! The only other USA region with a similar poverty rate is, you bet, the nation’s gleaming capital, Washington DC, at 23.3%. http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p60-244.pdf Get a clue. Again, please remember, once and for all, statist welfare begets misery. What more proof do you need? Still not convinced? Take US education. The Dept of Education was Jimmy Carter’s gratuitous payoff to Democratic union bosses for making him president. This useless bureaucracy has been a confident failure in every measure for over thirty years. Such a comprehensive, massive, long-term farce is seldom seen (except in large and growing central government agencies). Since the Dept of Education the US has steadily fallen to near last is many global education metrics. C'mon. How about an informative field exercise for you to see your beloved govt in action? Go to your nearest large city. Have a nice evening stroll in its govt housing projects. What? You're afraid? You're afraid of govt? Good. Now we may be getting somewhere... Please, try to think differently. Adopt the great, abiding American Tradition of suspicion and hatred of central govt. Remember, Obama is not a King. Aaron, remember, when something is harmful, broken and evil, as this blog says govt is, don't do MORE of it and expect a different outcome, that's insane! Rather, scale-it-back, starve it, stop-the-bleeding, kill the beast. “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” - Thomas Jefferson.

Dopey. Government isn't the solution; government is the problem. By far what defines us is NOT government; it's civil society. Unfortunately, all these idiots care about is MORE government. They may even see civil society, the natural order of people to self-organize, as evil. We must evolve to focus on civil society. We must shrink govt, stop the bleeding, starve the beast! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society What is wrong with people?

Hi - If time, visit DBO -- http://www.drakesbayoyster.com/ It's great and probably closing due to federal overreach. -j

Hi - Nice post but very disappointing. Typical failing, 20th Century notion of tools and information. Why is it that all these tools no longer exist? It is because they do NOT work. Search is fast becoming obsolete. It is being subsumed by discovery, meaning and outcome. These inhabit social networks. Until people gain a comprehension of social networks, they will be stuck in the antiquated information age. See: http://www.regonline.com/SNA2010 Why take a Victorian-era approach to 21st Century opportunities? Good grief. http://networksingularity.com/2010/04/16/victorian-networks.aspx -j