SONEAN - Social Network Analysis (SNA) Lab 2013

As part of our goal to develop people with entirely new perspectives and our plan to identify future employees for our organization, we have created the Social Network Analysis Lab (SNA Lab) which Selma Peters, Erik Strauch and Lukas Macner have embarked on from July-August 2013. Lukas and Eric e.g. are students of the Frankfurt International School (FIS, see also www.fis.edu) in Oberursel which has proven ideal for both Funds@Work`s and SONEAN`s recruitement based on the exceptional quality of students which have joined us from FIS in the last three years. There is a clear commitment to enhance this cooperation with the FIS based on the very positive experience. The SNA Lab complements our academic research dedicated to the application of social network analysis and our team of 9 well known professors globally (SNA at Work) who get together regularly in different parts of the world (soon in Qatar-Doha after our latest meetings in the UAE-Dubai) to make social network analysis with us more relevant for organizations.

Selma, Erik and Lukas were fully integrated into our latest corporate ecosystem database project at SONEAN and learned to see the world from an entirely new perspective, going beyond financial and non-financial (ESG) data in their analyses. During their daily work and feedback discussions with the team at SONEAN they not only gained insights into the 12 year work and track record of Funds@Work AG and the new entity SONEAN but also worked actively on latest projects. An important part of the SNA Lab was also to introduce our young colleagues to social network theory, the most common measures as well as software and network related findings but above all its application to real life phenomena connecting theory to practice.

SONEAN`s aim is to help in revolutionizing (investment) decision making by going beyond financial and non-financial such as ESG data and provide crucial insights into the social connections among market participants such as corporate executives and non-executive directors in boards of major companies. Thus our Interns have learned not to look at companies in isolation but analyze and visualize the social networks in which corporate decision makers are embedded and how it affects their decisions. The aim of the SNA Lab is to train “highly selected” people and ensure that social network analysis soon becomes the third and crucial complementary pillar in decision making, allowing market participants to go beyond their existing data to include social network related insights and thus increase the predictive power of their analyses. By making social networks among corporate executive tangible and providing unique social network measures for decision makers we will allow them to manage risks more properly and identify new alpha sources.