When we think of superconnectors, we tend to picture a suave extrovert with a huge directory of contacts.  We imagine them putting enormous effort into meeting and contacting their prey 24/7.  But this is wrong.  Most of the ones we describe in the book are normal human beings, just like you and me.  Many of them are shy introverts.

Few of them put much conscious thought or effort into connecting.  It comes naturally as a by-product of their interests and obsessions.

And some of our superconnectors are distinctly different, almost the opposite of the conventional view of a good connector.

For starters, let’s look at one fascinating person.  You’ll find Peter Harding 40 miles south-west of London, down a narrow country lane that leads to a jumble of old farm buildings.  Inside, your eye is drawn to a gleaming metallic shape, streamlined and sinuous.  This is a 1957 Aurelia B20, built by Lancia in the long-gone days when it was the grande dame of Italian cars.

Peter used to run an air freight business.  A quarter-century ago he quit to pursue his passion.  He took three years to restore his own Aurelia – and realized that working with these cars would make him happy for the rest of his life.  He set up shop in the barn, and he found customers almost immediately.  He’s been busy ever since.

His customers come from all walks of life and have become his friends.  They tour with him in France or Italy.  He introduces them to each other, and they introduce each other to him.  He also connects a lot of things related to the cars – buyers with sellers, auctioneers and dealers with both, owners with suppliers of parts.

He doesn’t advertise.  He has no website, just an answering machine behind the kettle in his office.  But if you happen to buy one of these cars, the chances are that at some point you’ll find yourself driving down the narrow lane to his barn.

Peter is a specialist superconnector, fitting together all the pieces of this world around this particular car.  Because he plays such key role this little network, he connects everyone and everything in it.  He didn’t set out to do this.  It’s just what happened.

So here we have a man who lives in a village, hasn’t had many jobs or lived in many places, doesn’t reach out to people, and is fairly hard to find.  He doesn’t have a high network potential.  He’s not very active in cultivating the network he has.  He wouldn’t score highly on a networking quiz.  What on earth explains his success as a superconnector?

The strength of his message.   The role he fulfils.  His impassioned obsession.  With Peter Harding, the message creates the network more than the network creates the message.  To reverse Marshall McLuhan’s famous saying, the message is the medium.   In the next post, we’ll explore another strange example of a superconnector – this time someone who was feared and shunned by his colleagues – who had a tremendously positive impact on the world.  We’ll see that great superconnectors can break all the networking rules and still have a rich life and great impact.  Perhaps you could too – with the right message. — Richard Koch

Starbucks chief Howard Schultz says some amazing things in an interview with Harvard Business Review (July-August 2010).  “We are living in a society where there is a need for human connection and a sense of community.”  Not surprising, perhaps.  But he goes on to say “Our role as leaders is to celebrate the human connection that we have been able to create as a company.”  He also says that the Starbucks brand is defined not just by the quality of the coffee “but also, most importantly, by the relationship that the barista has with the customer and whether the customer feels valued, appreciated, and respected.”

Now, it’s easy to be cynical about this.  To me one of the amazing feats of Starbucks is to raise the price of a cup of coffee from the 25-50 cents I used to pay to something that can approach four dollars – an 8 to 16 times increase.  However wonderful the coffee itself – and it ain’t bad at all – we all know that the cost of the coffee is a very small fraction of the price.  So if Starbucks has to charge for something other than coffee, it could say it was charging for its skilled staff, its overheads, a comfy seat, internet access, or other justifiable costs.  But, ah, excuse me, no.  It is charging for connecting its customers.  And not primarily to each other, but to the Starbucks staff.  It’s like the Church of Rome passing round the plate not for God, or church maintenance, or the incense and music, or the Pope’s pronouncements, but for the connection offered to the local priest.

And if Starbucks is all about connection, how come it has started to sell its products – including instant coffee – through supermarkets?   There’s no connection to Starbucks or its staff, except through the product itself.

I don’t want to be cynical.  If you read the whole interview, the thing that shines through is Howard Schultz’s sincerity.  He really believes this connection stuff and how it relates to Starbucks.  Poor man.  You almost see him go dewy-eyed when he tells the story of a woman barista donating a kidney to stop a customer, who had become a friend, from dying.  It’s a moving story, and as Schultz says, something like this doesn’t happen very often.

And yet – as someone who cares not a fig about Starbucks but a great deal about how we connect with each other – I have to say the interview made me think that connection is becoming overhyped by commercial interests.  It’s a sad day if we have to become connected by a glitzy brand, which, do not forget, has to work hard to keep voracious shareholders happy.  As my dear departed mother used to repeat, the best things in life are free.  Connection is best when it’s freely sought and freely offered, with absolutely no commercial motive whatsoever.  Anyone can connect with anyone, every day, at zero cost.

Only connect!  And please, Mr Schultz, keep the coffee out of it! – Richard Koch

Thomas Friedman made an enormous splash with his book The World is Flat. Since then it has become received wisdom.  But in the parts of the market where serious money is to be made, the idea is simply wrong.

Friedman argues that the challenge from low-cost suppliers in China, India and other sometimes-surprising parts of the world mean that competition is hotting up.  There is an increasingly level playing field globally and no firm in the developed world is safe.

Well, this may be true in many markets – where one product is much like another, then the one with the lowest price tag will win, which gives enormous advantage to places such as China, where despite the hype, the real advantage the Chinese have is that they are poor and willing to work hard, long hours for little pay.

But in network markets – the real route to riches – the world is definitely not flat.

Network markets are those where the network of customers determines the value.  The larger the network, the better for customers – and owners.  Nobody wants to go to any empty bar or restaurant, for example, so the value of a place is determined to some extent by how popular it is.  Telephone or texting networks are the same – the bigger the network, the more value it has to users.  The same is true of networks such as Facebook, Betfair, Google, eBay or Amazon.  These markets favour a few big players – or sometimes just one.  Markets become more monopolistic, because in networks that is the way customers want it.

Here the market is not flat, and competition from countries with low labour costs is largely irrelevant.  Here the threat is not cheap labour, but new technology, different regulation, some other sea-change, or invasion from another very large network with a clever strategy, such as when Amazon took eBay to the cleaners (we’ll write a blog about this later).

So, whereas large parts of the competitive scenery may be flat, there are some great hulking mountains as well.  And serious money flows from mountains, not valleys.

Do you find the trend to monopoly depressing, with fewer and fewer players taking more and more of a market?  Do networks, in this case, mean less opportunity?   Well, yes and no.  Networks lead to decentralized concentration.  The niche can be very concentrated, but it is often very specialized, and perhaps didn’t exist a few years ago.

Networks usually expand by splitting an existing market into two, and later fragmenting it again, with new types of customer and new ways of making a living by pleasing them.  In the world of betting, for instance, we used to have state monopolies of gambling, or else an oligarchy of a few big bookmakers – in both cases, the gamblers got a raw deal.  Then Internet gambling opened up other niches – new players, different from the old ones, took the lead online.  Then we had spread betting, then poker specialists, then betting exchanges, each with their own innovators.  Each expansion of new niches tends to create concentration, but it is typically a new opportunity and a new concentrated network.  It actually benefits consumers, who don’t always like a flat world.

In Friedman’s terms, the terrain starts out flat, then someone builds a mountain – Google, for instance.  Or someone takes an existing mountain, and erects a nice new hill alongside it – as with Betfair’s innovation in betting exchanges.  Not just wealth, but richness of experience and unique new products, concentrate in hilly areas.   The views are better, for customers as well as executives and investors.  Men and women do not want to spend all their time in valleys – there is more to life than getting a commodity cheaper than you did last year. — Richard Koch