Writing previous post I realised that it would be interesting to look at “boundary spanning” activities of knowledge networkers. I know that there is some research on the topic, but I’m not familiar with it. What would be interesting from my perspective is better understanding of personal triggers and processes of boundary spanning and match-making:
- How do you spot an opportunity to make a connection?
- Why do you feel like connecting “related, but not connected” ideas or people?
- How do you do make a connection (especially if it is not a single case of connecting two ideas from different fields, but a more complex case of connecting two totally different methodologies)?
- What does it give to you?
In my case it’s much about enjoying diversity, having fun of spotting similarities and differences, feeling pity when different sides do not know about each other or don’t understand each other, even more fun of “translating” ideas and connecting people… I’m happy that I found quite early in my professional life that I enjoyed building bridges and was able to achieve results doing it, so I came to being conscious about choosing job and project opportunities that allow and require “boundary spanning”. The funny thing is that I didn’t reflect much on how I did it before writing previous post :)
Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/01/09.html#a895; comments are here.Tags: community straddling, knowledge networker
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