I’ve just finished reading “Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks” by Peter Csermely , who is a Professor of Biochemistry at the Semmelweis University of Budapest. The central theme is weak links are the determinants of system stability and diversity. Csermely defines a link “as 'weak', when its addition or removal does not change the mean value of a target measure at a statistically discernible way" (p. 83).

The book is an interesting read if only because its topic matter ranges from network complexity in physical systems, to biological systems, and finally social and cultural systems. Personally I think there are a few longbows drawn, but in fairness Csermely does clearly indicate where he is engaging in speculation. One fascinating discussion was the discourse on pink noise. Pink noise is also known as coloured noise, flicker noise, crackling noise and Barkhausen noise. Seemingly pink noise is present in systems as diverse as solar flares, traffic flows and group decision making, and has a stabilising or relaxing effect. Quoting several scientific sources he postulates that pink noise helps neural synchronisation, which is partly responsible for memory formation. To put it another way if you want to memorise something have Mozart playing in the background rather than bagpipes, because Mozart’s music has pink noise properties!

Csermeley’s discussion on immunological networks is also interesting. He says an immune system has to solve four problems:

• the self/ non-self recognition problem;
• the signal to noise problem;
• the context problem; and
• the response problem.

Now this is interesting because the later three points define the knowledge retrieval problem of a knowledge management system. Apparently weak links are the immune system’s mechanism to solve these problems.

A software package typically consists of several hierarchical and modular components, which are bound by strong links. Taking a lesson from the immune system perhaps we need to build software with lots of weak links, and ensure our people and process dimensions also have many weak links? Perhaps these weak links will allow the percolation of knowledge through the human, process, and technology systems. Perhaps our real problem with knowledge management is we try to over-engineer everything and in so doing build strong links rather than weak links. I’m beginning to think weak links matter. What do you think?

Regards, Graham.