Most Productive Authors in JASIST

Timeframe: Dec 2001 (JASIST vol 52, No. 14) – July 2011 (JASIST vol 62, No. 7)

Two types of counting method are used:

1. Whole count: Each author receive a credit with a count of 1.
2. Fractional count: Here, if a publication is authored by N number of authors, each author receive credit with a count of 1/N.

Source: ISI Web of Knowledge

Preview: Netherlands vs Spain

Netherlands:

Spain:

Few notes:

• This match may be more tightly contested than Spain vs Germany. This is because Netherlands, unlike Germany, does not have an over reliance towards a single player (like Schweinsteiger in Germany). So, it might be tougher for Spain to dominate the possession like it did against Germany.
• On another note, Netherlands past view goals have been due to Sneijder’s geniuses. So, if Spain can take care of Sneijder, Netherlands possibility to score should be minimized.

Germany Pass Network (aggregated from all matches)

Notes:

• To prevent the network becoming too cluttered, an edge is only shown when its weight is greater than or equal to 15.
• Thanks to JJ Merelo for the data.

Xavi pass-network (ESP 0:1 SUI)

Throughout the five games Spain has played in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Xavi has been one of its most important player. He has passed the ball more than anyone else in his team, and also more than anyone else in the World Cup (up to quarter final stage). He has passed the ball 464 times (92 times/game) with a passing accuracy of 80%.

If we look at the authority centrality in Spain team, Xavi has always been among the top 2 most central player in his team. This is the definition of authority-centrality from ORA:

A node is authority-central to the extent that its in-links are from nodes that have many out-links. Individuals or organizations that act as authorities are receiving information from a wide range of others each of whom sends information to a large number of others. Technically, an agent is authority-central if its in-links are from agents that have are sending links to many others. The scientific name of this measure is authority centrality and it is calculated on agent by agent matrices.

In other word, Xavi is authority central because he received passes from other players who passes the balls a lot (i.e. played the distributor role in the team).

Let’s visit Xavi passing game during Spain’s first game against Swiss (which it lost).

*The size of the jersey indicates the authority-centrality of each player.

The thickness of the line indicates the frequency of passes between Xavi and the other player. Very interestingly, Xavi only passed the ball successfully to David Villa 3 times throughout the whole game. This fact is even more surprising since Torres only came into play in minute 61 replacing Busquets (note: Xavi did not have any successful pass towards Torres in this game). As a comparison, in Spain subsequent games where Torres played the game from the beginning, Xavi had 5 completed passes towards Villa (vs Honduras), 5 (vs Chile), 18 (vs Portugal), and 8 (vs Paraguay). And successful passes towards Torres are: 3 (vs Honduras), 1 (vs Chile), 5 (vs Portugal), 2 (vs Paraguay).

It can also be observed the preference of Xavi to pass towards Iniesta rather than to David Silva. And also he passed the ball more often to Sergio Ramos rather than to David Silva. David Silva is definitely a competent player, but it doesn’t seem he meshed well during the match. And Xavi (one of Spain most influential player) seemed not very comfortable playing along with him (indicated from the number of passes among them). Guess what, this match against Swiss was the first and also the last game (upto quarter final) for David Silva. He did not even enter other matches as a substitute.

There could be other reasons why David Silva has not played since the match against Swiss. But this could be an analogy in an organization setting. Talent alone may not guarantee a place in an organization, one should make sure he/she can mesh together with other team member (especially with the influential people in the organization.)

Germany pass-networks (against Australia) – 2010 FIFA World Cup

Germany won its first game in 2010 FIFA World Cup against Australia 4:0.

Inspired by what FAS.research did in visualizing the pass-network of soccer matches (there are a number of matches from the 2010 FIFA World Cup as well), here is the Germany pass-network against Australia.

Here are the number of passes completed by each German players:

• Philipp LAHM – 71 pass(es)
• Arne FRIEDRICH – 68 pass(es)
• Per MERTESACKER – 64 pass(es)
• Bastian SCHWEINSTEIGER – 54 pass(es)
• Holger BADSTUBER – 47 pass(es)
• Sami KHEDIRA – 41 pass(es)
• Thomas MUELLER – 34 pass(es)
• Manuel NEUER – 24 pass(es)
• Mesut OEZIL – 24 pass(es)
• Lukas PODOLSKI – 15 pass(es)
• Miroslav KLOSE – 7 pass(es)
• CACAU – 5 pass(es)
• Mario GOMEZ – 1 pass(es)
• Marko MARIN – 1 pass(es)

The defenders contributed 250 out of 456 passes (54.8%)!

And the following are the number of passes received by each player:

• Arne FRIEDRICH – receive 63 pass(es)
• Per MERTESACKER – receive 60 pass(es)
• Bastian SCHWEINSTEIGER – receive 59 pass(es)
• Philipp LAHM – receive 58 pass(es)
• Thomas MUELLER – receive 42 pass(es)
• Sami KHEDIRA – receive 40 pass(es)
• Lukas PODOLSKI – receive 34 pass(es)
• Holger BADSTUBER – receive 33 pass(es)
• Mesut OEZIL – receive 31 pass(es)
• Miroslav KLOSE – receive 14 pass(es)
• Manuel NEUER – receive 12 pass(es)
• CACAU – receive 10 pass(es)
• Mario GOMEZ – receive 6 pass(es)
• Marko MARIN – receive 4 pass(es)

Passes to defenders 45.9%, midfielders (Schweinsteiger, Khedira, Oezil and Gomez) 29.2%, forwards (Klose, Cacau, Podolski, Marin and Mueller) 22.3%.

Source of inspiration: FAS Research

A simple network analysis on hedge fund holdings

I’ve been following the website Financial Network Analysis lately. Wanting to get my hands dirty, I tried to generate simple network map of hedge fund holdings.

Based on the hedge fund portfolio tracker compiled by marketfolly, I constructed a network map of some stocks which are held by at least two hedge funds.

Here are the list of hedge funds tracked:

• Appaloosa Management (David Tepper)
• Baupost Group (Seth Klarman)
• Berkshire Hatheway (Warren Buffett)
• Blue Ridge Capital (John Griffin)
• Bridger Management (Roberto Mignone)
• Conatus Capital (David Stemerman)
• Fairholme Capital Management (Bruce Berkowitz)
• Greenlight Capital (David Einhorn)
• Harbinger Capital Partners (Phil Falcone)
• Lone Pine Capital (Stephen Mandel)
• Maverick Capital (Lee Ainslie)
• Pabrai Investment Fund (Mohnish Pabrai)
• Paulson & Co (John Paulson)
• Pershing Square Capital Management (Bill Ackman)
• RBS Partners (Eddie Lampert)
• Shumway Capital Partners (Chris Shumway)
• Soros Fund Management (George Soros)
• Third Point LLC (Dan Loeb)
• Tiger Global (Chase Coleman)
• Tiger Management (Julian Robertson)
• Viking Global (Andreas Halvorsen)

The red nodes are the fund managers for each hedge fund. The bigger the size of the node of a stock (blue nodes) means that the stock are held by more hedge funds. Here is the network map (click on the image for larger size):

As can be seen Apple, Wells Fargo, and Visa are held by the most hedge funds (7 to be exact).

Directorship Interlocks among US 51 Largest Companies (by Market Caps)

I tried to map the directorship interlocks among the companies.

The data sources are from:

• Finviz (I used the screener to find the largest companies – as per 4 February 2010)
• Reuters (the list of directors for each company)

Software used:

• Ucinet (For the creation of affiliation matrices derived from the DL file)
• ORA (For the visualiation)

The results are here:

• Directorship Interlocks Map – the larger the node size the higher the betweenness of the company
• List of Directors & Company Abbreviations List (http://www.box.net/shared/d1nant9r9a)

The top 10 companies with the highest betweenness centrality are as follows:

• IBM – INTL BUSINESS MAC
• BA – BOEING CO
• GE – GEN ELECTRIC CO
• WFC – WELLS FARGO & CO
• UTX – UNITED TECH
• JPM – JP MORGAN CHASE C
• DIS – WALT DISNEY-DISNE
• MCD – MCDONALDS CP
• BRK – BERKSHIRE

I will come up with more statistical measures of the network in the subsequent post.

10 Keys to Innovation

The best way to coax ideas is to be systematic. Imagine that what follows is like a bunch of keys. Work through them one by one. Some may not be helpful but others may unlock entrepreneurial potential.

1. Reinvent the Familiar
2. Improve the Familiar
3. Reduce Loss
4. Solve Problems
5. Take What Nobody Wants
6. Make the Expensive Cheap
7. Get the Price Right
8. Add Value
9. Invent A Name
10. The Master Key (i.e. Social Acceptance)

Source: How to be a Successful Entrepreneur

Value of Knowledge Management

Following are some extract for Marina du Plessis article titled “Drivers of Knowledge Management in the Corporate Environment”

….the value that knowledge management adds lies in:

• Creating collaboration forums where knowledge can be created and shared, that can act as a catalyst for decisions and actions to be taken based on knowledge shared or created in these forums, in order to maximise opportunities.
• Retaining knowledge created and shared through collaboration forums and making it available for reuse later in a different context.
• Mining of internal business information and external information (including customer oriented information), turning it into knowledge through the use of knowledge management tools, e.g. business intelligence, whereby trends relating to the business and its external environment can be identified and acted upon.
• Increasing individual, team and organisational efficiency through the use of collaboration forums.
• Centralising access to knowledge, thus providing one view of a particular subject or area, e.g. customer knowledge.

Based on the above, the overarching objective of knowledge management according to the
author is thus to create, share, harvest and leverage knowledge in order to:

• Initiate action based on knowledge.
• Support business strategy implementation and realisation of business objectives.
• Create an intelligent enterprise through.
  1. Retention of corporate and individual knowledge.
  2. More accurate prediction of important opportunities.
  3. Growth of the corporate knowledge base.

• Increase competitive advantage.
• Create an innovative culture and environment.
• Entrench collaboration as a work practice.
• Improve work efficiency, i.e. increased organisational capacity through:
  1. Improved decision making.
  2. Improved customer service.
  3. Improved solution of business problems.
  4. Increased productivity.
  5. Improved leveraging of corporate and individual knowledge.

Full article here.

Driving Innovation Through Networks

The following five practices can be used to overcome the barriers that undermine many organizations’ ability to identify and execute innovation opportunities:

1. Create a network-centric ability to sense and respond to opportunities. Building awareness of who knows what in a network is critical for people to tap the right expertise at the right time.
2. Develop an ability to rapidly test and refine an opportunity. Mapping decision-making networks so that emerging opportunity can be tried rapidly.
3. Work through people in specific network positions. Engage people who are information brokers who can reach out to other key connectors in the network. The idea is to bring diversity of people to work on the new idea as it  is critical to its quality and to the ease of implementation (i.e. preventing the idea to be developed in isolation).
4. Leverage energy. Mapping enthusiasm in networks to indicate who makes them feel energized provides a powerful indicator of where creativity and innovation are occurring.
5. Ensure that organizational context supports collaboration. Simply introducing a collaborative technology, tweaking incentives, or advocating cultural programs to boost collaboration is insufficient. What is also required is the alignment of unique aspects of formal organization design, control systems, technology, and human resource practices. Specific cultural values and leadership can also have striking effects of collaboration.

Source: Chapter 3 of Driving Results Through Social Networks: How Top Organizations Leverage Networks for Performance and Growth by Rob Cross