This article will delve into the network thinking model and reveal its unique value in analyzing and solving problems. This article covers the definition of network thinking, application scenarios, and how to cultivate this mindset, and guides readers to deeply understand and practice network thinking, hoping to help you.
The famous poet Kitajima wrote a poem called "Life", the content of which is only one word: net.
Today, we live in the age of the Internet and are exposed to a wide variety of networks and mental models on a daily basis. Here's the 77th of the 100 analytical thinking models: network thinking, which can help us quickly find a breakthrough in solving a problem.
1. Why do you want to learn network thinking?
Charlie Munger said: To be an intelligent person, you must have multiple models. And, you have to put your experience, both indirect and direct, onto the grids that make up these models.
In a rapidly changing environment, traditional mindsets may no longer apply, and you need to find answers in cyber thinking. Network thinking provides a new way of thinking, helping us to expand the boundaries of thinking, so as to better understand the structure and dynamics of systems, and make correct judgments and decisions in the midst of uncertainty.
By learning network thinking, you will see things in a networked way, so as to discover the patterns and patterns behind things, find new connections and possibilities, and therefore better understand and deal with complex problems.
In conclusion, cyber thinking is a powerful thinking tool that can provide us with new perspectives and insights that help us identify opportunities and keep innovating to make thinking more effective.
2. What is network thinking?
Networks are made up of dots and lines connected and are usually represented by meshed graphics. Here are a few of the more common network structures: random networks, geographic networks, power-law networks, and small-world networks.
Networks are almost everywhere, including: neural networks, transportation networks, trade networks, the Internet, relationship networks, power grids, ...... The brain is home to about 100 billion brain cells, each of which is interconnected with 10,000 other brain cells to form a sophisticated network that controls what people say and do.
Matthew Jackson, a professor of economics at Stanford University in the United States, said in the book "Human Network": Human society has always been a network structure, and your network is your destiny.
The web is like an amplifier that quickly amplifies the characteristics of things. For example, viruses and rumors can spread very quickly because people form a network of relationships that can spread exponentially from one to the other. If you want to slow down the spread of viruses and rumors, you need to find a way to cut off the network and remove the key big nodes from the network.
Network thinking is a network-based way of thinking that represents the connection between things through the connection of nodes and line segments, nodes can represent various things or concepts, and line segments represent the associations between them. Network thinking emphasizes holistic and systematic thinking, and needs to consider the interactions and relationships between individual nodes in the network, rather than focusing only on individual or local problems.
3. How to use network thinking?
Cyber thinking is widely used in various fields, including: artificial intelligence, social sciences, business analytics, etc. In the field of artificial intelligence, a neural network is a mathematical model in deep learning, which mainly processes information through the interconnection between neuronal nodes, including the input layer, the hidden layer, and the output layer.
In social networks, network thinking is often used to study interpersonal relationships, information dissemination and community structure, etc., to evaluate the influence of social networks and improve the effectiveness of social media marketing. Nodes that have more connections usually have more influence. "Three-degree friends" can be very important for personal growth, because the number of friends of friends is very large, and they may become your new friends, providing you with new information and job opportunities.
"Who knows you" is more important than "who you know". The more people who know and need you, the more irreplaceable you are, the more important you are, and the more valuable you are.
When expanding your network, you should not only consider the number of contacts, but also the quality of your network, and make friends with those who are more valuable will make you more valuable. Someone concluded, "One is to do it yourself, the second is to be told that you can do it, and the third is to say that you can do it."
When a master changes jobs, he usually uses weak connections to obtain as much information as possible, and then uses strong relationships to exert enough influence to finally find a job that satisfies him. In the workplace, those who can connect different departments, different companies, and different industries usually have greater value and influence, and may be better developed in the future. The competition in modern society is often not a one-man battle, but a fierce contest between networks.
In business analytics, network thinking can be used to optimize supply chains, market relationships, and customer interactions, among other things, to find bottlenecks in the logistics network, improve operational efficiency, and reduce costs. If you want to promote a new product, you can use online thinking to find key nodes in your network and use their influence to increase the sales of your product. In everyday life,
We can also use network thinking to solve some real-world problems. For example, in the 18th-century city of Königsberg, where there were 7 bridges, there was a popular puzzle: Can you walk through all 7 bridges without repeating them?
The puzzle was solved in 1736 by the famous mathematician Euler, who saw land and islands as points in a network and bridges as lines connecting them, ignoring unimportant details in the map.
Therefore, Euler used network thinking to simplify the "seven-bridge problem" into a "one-stroke problem", successfully proving that the problem is unsolvable, and thus creating a new branch of mathematics: graph theory. The human body can also be seen as a complex network system, with different tissues connected by blood vessels and nerves. When treating diseases, using network thinking, we should not simply treat headaches and pains, but consider the problem holistically.
When learning, we can also use network thinking to reduce linear text into network knowledge, build our own knowledge graph, and form a structured knowledge network in order to better understand the context of knowledge.
Some software can help us improve our learning efficiency, such as in Feishu Docs, by referencing other documents, we can generate a document relationship diagram in the form of a network.
Nowadays, network resources are very abundant, as long as you find a key network node, you can find more relevant resources, continue to dig deeper, you can also become an expert in a certain subdivision.
Your achievements in a field mainly depend on a web of various knowledge, rather than isolated knowledge points. The fragmented knowledge recommended by some algorithms is difficult to fill the gaps in the knowledge system, and it is difficult to improve our thinking and cognition, and even makes us fall into an information cocoon, making our vision narrow, unable to exercise and expand our creative thinking. If you want to make your mind deeper, you need to find the connection between knowledge and build your own knowledge network and knowledge system.
IV. Final Words
By learning and applying network thinking, you will better understand complex phenomena, improve your ability to reason, explain, design, communicate, act, predict and explore, and reveal potential connections between data for better data mining and predictive analysis. If you lack a network mindset, you may be subject to cognitive biases and your ability to process data will be limited. I hope that with the help of network thinking, you can adapt to the needs of the Internet era, better understand and deal with complex problems, improve your innovation ability and core competitiveness, and become a wiser person.
Official account: Lin Ji, author of "Data Analysis".
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