Periodic Fable

Amplified individuals are the new superheroes in organisations and networks. They are the people who embrace new tools and applications, try out new practices, experiment and make them work. Others in the organisation can then follow on behind, taking advantage of their research and expertise.

Such individuals present a huge opportunity for small business as they amplify what small businesses do really well – they establish relationships of trust, understand niche markets and are entrepreneurially agile in exploring new areas.

Amplified individuals can make up for what small businesses lack – overcoming problems of finding and retaining staff, training, access to capital, negative perceptions about small and new businesses, and limits of infrastructure.

Such people are highly social, providing social filters for massive amounts of information – they allow small business to filter information. They typically use very effectively tools such as social bookmarking and social networks – in fact networks form around such people and they are able to tap into and contribute to the communal intelligence – the “wisdom of crowds”. Find the amplified individuals in your sector and/or local business community and you have a huge benefit.

Or perhaps you aim to BE the amplified individual, providing useful information and the benefit of early adoption and experience via blogs, Twitter, networks, events, social bookmarking etc.

Andrea Saveri spoke about this at the NLAbs Social Networks conference back in summer 2008: Amplified individuals, amplified organisations: an emerging small business ecosystem (Slideshow)

Originally published at reachfurther.com