Networks _______________________________________________________
Volterra, and our director Paul Ormerod, have been instrumental in furthering the technical understanding and application of social network analysis. This is not just about online social networks like Facebook and MySpace (although these can be important) but more generally it is the analysis of how people and organisations interact and how different network structures can influence the spread of behaviour. This is becoming increasingly important in many fields, from marketing strategy to public policy making.
Volterra has developed techniques to extract actionable knowledge from these social networks. This enables clients to turn basic behavioural and social information into knowledge which can be used to make business more profitable and policy more effective.
For example, our analysis can help to answer the following questions:
- How does innovation spread amongst firms in a region and how can policy help to improve this flow? [ Manchester Independent Economic Review ]
- How can policy best achieve desirable social ends e.g. increasing savings or reducing unemployment? [ FSA ]
- In your market, how important is social influence in determining sales and success compared to the more traditional, 'objective' factors like price and advertising?
[ Advertising Association ]
- If social influence matters, how does it spread and is it changing over time?
