Advantage accrues to whoever bridges otherwise disconnected clusters and brokers across the gap.
Burt's 1992 argument. The broker's advantage is informational and controlling at once: they see combinations nobody else sees and they choose what passes between the clusters.
In practice
- A project manager who is the only person attending both the clinical meeting and the procurement meeting becomes indispensable without acquiring a single new skill.
- Two suppliers who never meet are quoted against each other by the buyer who knows both, and the buyer's margin is the gap between them.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Networks & Collective Behavior
- Essay
- How connections shape what crowds do