Duncan J. Watts is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, head of the CDG Collective Dynamics Group and author of the book Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Norton, 2003). He received his doctoral degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University in 1997. In 1998, in conjunction with Steven Strogatz of Cornell University, Watts formalized the small world phenomenon in a celebrated Nature paper (393:440 - 442). Watts is also affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute. Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. ... Cornell redirects here. ... The small world phenomenon (also known as the small world effect) is the hypothesis that everyone in the world can be reached through a short chain of social acquaintances. ... First title page, November 4, 1869 Nature is one of the oldest and most reputable scientific journals, first published on 4 November 1869. ... The Santa Fe Institute [SFI] is a non-profit research institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico founded by George Cowan, David Pines, Stirling Colgate, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter Carruthers, and Richard Slansky in 1984 to study complex systems. ...
Watts argues that the ability of organizations to adapt depends on the degree to which they can take on small world properties, thereby efficiently reducing the social distance between individuals who might need to be connected.
Watts argues that this capability will be enhanced to the degree to which the organization possesses “multilevel connectivity”.
Watts has reminded us that the large-scale properties of a network system matter, and it is up to us to figure out how to devise empirical studies that take these properties into account.
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