I met with Dr. Jane Wei-Skillern yesterday in her office at Harvard Business School, where is on the faculty in the Social Enterprise group. Jane’s research and practice interest is in how non-profits can achieve growth strategies by building and leverage networks. We talked about our mutual interest in networked organizational forms and the emerging understanding of how to manage networks. Although her work is focused specifically on Nonprofit Networking, many of her observations and experiences are very similar to mine.

One of the topics we discussed was the lack of awareness (still) among many business leaders about the option of a network approach to organizational strategy and design. She reminded me (as I tend to forget, immersed as I am in the subject) that network thinking is still in its early days, and there is much to learn and practice before it enters the common vocabulary of business.

It’s about the vocabulary, and I’ve been thinking of how the distinctions of language are creeping into our daily speech and how much these are helping us understand that, like fish in water, we are in networks all the time but we don’t distinguish this as our environment — until we have the language. Jane smiled and offered that there is yet another dimension to the “coming-to-understand:” what if, she suggested, that it’s more than just helping the fish see that they are in water, but also to show them that there may be choice between freshwater and saltwater. Bravo!