An interesting article I read was by Russel Jurney from Radar.com called, Graphs in the world: Modeling systems as networks. The article is about how networks are all around us, but most people cannot see them or do not notice them. Graphing markets is a new way to create value. The graphs show what the data is hiding. Russel goes on in the article to create graphs for a startup ecosystem and a network-driven marketing.
The startup ecosystem network used in the article was the Atlanta Security Cluster. Each node was a company and each link represents someone who worked at that company and went to found another security company. The most interesting part of the graph is the fact that so many security companies form in Atlanta. This type of information is valuable to people looking to fund a security startup. This is important information that people can gain from making a network, it allows for larger understanding of the whole market. It also gives outsiders insight into the markets that they are not familiar with.
Another network that Russel created was a network of his own emails. This is something that I think is interesting and plan to do myself. The network allowed Russel to see whom he was emailing the most and all the different email subscriptions and groups he was getting emails form. It is easy to know who you receive many emails from just by looking through your inbox, but once graphed into a network it allows for a different interpretation of the network and data.
The article was very interesting. The idea that networks are all around us is something that makes you think. Data is all around and being able to put that information into networks will help to see what the data is saying in new ways.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2015/06/graphs-in-the-world-modeling-systems-as-networks.html
Economic Theory of Networks at Temple University 