Friend of a Friend summary

Remember those cliques in high school that all had their special spots in the cafeteria? It’s a universal experience: people have a natural tendency to gather in exclusive groups of familiar people. If you’ve ever tried to get to know new people at a house party, you’ll have seen the same thing in action.

But, in truth, we’d all be better off trying to mingle with people we don’t know at all. That’s because connecting with utterly unfamiliar groups nourishes innovation.  

The classic image of innovation and invention is that of a wiry, white-haired and bespeckled scientist at a lab bench, his cry of eureka echoing into the lonely void. But things aren’t like that anymore: innovation increasingly comes down to teamwork.

Sociologist Brian Uzzi's 2007 article in the journal Science showed that innovation through teamwork in the scientific community had significantly increased over the previous 50 years.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus declares that those who already possess much will be sure to acquire more. In sociology, this is called the Matthew effect, and it applies to networking, too.

Simply put, the more connected you are, the more connected you’ll get. It’s pretty logical, really: when people are out to make new contacts, they naturally look for people who already have lots of ties.

Imagine that one of your friends was 100-feet tall. If you were then to calculate your friendship group’s average height, you’d find that this one measurement had skewed the average dramatically upward. In fact, you’d have to admit that you were shorter than average.

The same idea holds true when comparing network sizes. Though many people like to imagine they have more friends and contacts than the average, they don’t. That’s because Super Connectors – people who have amassed mountains of contacts – will knock the average right out of whack.

The old saying goes that birds of a feather flock together, and there’s a lot of truth in that. Just look at how US elections are split between increasingly polarized Democrats and Republicans.

And science confirms the proverb: humans tend to cluster into groups of people similar to themselves.

Whether you’re an introvert who’s mortified by the idea of social mixers, or an extrovert who finds them boring, you’ll be relieved to know that skipping them altogether is probably your best option.

There are several reasons for this.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are probably the two biggest business magnates there are. Interestingly, they collaborate with one another as well. It’s a relationship based on a friendship that began while playing bridge in 1991.

This demonstrates how friendships can lead to successful business relationships, too.