We’ve been told that the paper is very "tight" both in terms of the presentation of theoretical arguments and the care and precision with which the empirical study is conducted. The general idea of the paper—that social networks are crucial to effective knowledge transfer in organizations—has existed for some time, but there has been very little research that has directly substantiated this notion in a rigorous manner.

It actually refines our understanding of existing theories of social networks and knowledge transfer. Specifically, the paper shows that two important properties of social networks that had previously been considered inconsistent are actually compatible. And, the paper directly isolates the effects of these two properties of social networks, whereas previous research had indirectly inferred their effects.

The main finding of the paper is that social networks—the pattern of ties among a set of individuals—ease the flow of knowledge in organizations. This is interesting because it means that apart from the quality, or strength, of the relationship between two people, their connections to other people not directly involved in their relationship also matter. Two people are more effective at sharing knowledge when they are connected to many of the same contacts because such cohesive network structures promote cooperation. At the same time, when the person "sending" knowledge has a network characterized by range—contacts to other people who are themselves disconnected from each other—that person is more effective at translating complex ideas to the person "receiving" knowledge. Taken together, the paper demonstrates that the two social network properties of cohesion and range are compatible, rather than in conflict, as previous research had suggested.

Both of us joined Carnegie Mellon as freshly minted Ph.D.s with principal research interests in social networks. A senior colleague of ours, Professor Linda Argote, introduced us to her research on organizational learning and knowledge transfer. As we learned more about this fascinating area of research we realized the value of applying a social network perspective to study how learning and knowledge sharing occurs in organizations. The basic idea for this paper was "networks meets knowledge transfer."