The Reliants Project

YY Ahn is an Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. He investigates questions across a range of fields including sociology, health, economics and culture.

In this episode we:

- Discuss what YY learned from analysing LinkedIn's data from 500 million users in 25 years - Talk about the friendship paradox and how understanding it affects your physical and mental health - Explore YY's research on COVID and counterintuitive approaches to contact tracing

Michelle Rogan is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London Business School. Her research explores how people and organisations' social capital impacts entrepreneurship and innovation.

In this episode we: - Talk about how small worlds show up in our lives - Discuss who actually owns your network in a work context and how that impacts your job performance - Learn about how the nature of your work relationships influences your ability to successfully change jobs

Noah Askin is an Assistant Professor at INSEAD. His research is on social and cultural networks and how they drive creativity and innovation, particularly in the music industry. He also teaches organisational design and leadership, focusing on corporate culture and organisational change.

In this episode we discuss:

• Noah's research on musicians and what impacts their creativity
• The trade-offs around organisation design, formal and informal structures
• A clever idea to expand your network during lockdown

Alexander Gates is a post-doctoral research associate at The Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University, also known as the Barabasi Lab. His research is focused on the science of success and the dynamics of academic careers. In this episode we: - Discuss how you can apply the 'science of success' to further your career- Learn about the random impact rule and why it's possible to be successful later in life- Talk about easy practical steps each of us can take to improve our own network

Marc Ventresca is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford Said Business School. His work focuses specifically on entrepreneurs and social innovators, understanding how they build networks to support their initiatives and how those networks evolve over time.

In this episode we discuss:

• How entrepreneurs and social innovators build networks to support their goals
• The role of diversity in those networks and what it unlocks in terms of opportunity
• Recommendations for how to grow your network as an entrepreneur

Janice McCabe is an associate professor of sociology at Dartmouth College and author of Connecting in College. Her research explores how students make and keep friends as well as how their friendship networks help or hurt their academic and social success.

In this episode we discuss:

• The different types of friend network structures Janice discovered in her research
• How gender and race show up in the context of Janice's work on networks
• The nature of multiplex ties and how they help students maintain friendships over time

Scott David is the founder of Shapeable.ai, which grew out of his work as the Head of Information Interaction at the World Economic Forum. He supports social innovators by creating powerful knowledge graphs which unpack complex issues into manageable parts and identify the relevant stakeholders to drive change.

In this episode we discuss:

• The things that can be described as a network and how that influences your view of the world
• The specifics of what knowledge graphs are and what makes them so powerful
• How Scott uses knowledge graphs around them to engage stakeholders around issues

Access the full show notes here.

The Reliants Project is a podcast about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships and community. In this introductory episode I give some background to my story and talk about the importance of network science in helping you actively cultivate your network, whether your goal is to build your relationships more deliberately, make better introductions, or activate networks to make an impact in the world.