Its Not How Many People You Know and the Power Law Distribution

Shirkey says that it isn't how many people you know that matters, but how many different KINDS of people you know. He says that large networks thrive from including many different kinds of people with different skills. If you know a lot of the same kind of people, i.e. the people in your department in your company but not people in the other departments, you are limited in how creative you can be.

The Power Law Distribution says that the ability of everyone to publish information on thier own blogs creates a lot of "failures", in terms of good information and valuable new ideas. But out of a majority of failures comes a few really good successes.