Friend of a Friend
David Burkus · 2018
Friend of a Friend (2018) is a book by David Burkus on networking & relationships. Burkus overturns networking clichés with network science. Weak ties, structural holes, dormant contacts, superconnectors, he shows your most valuable network already exists, waiting to be discovered rather than built.
Stop "building" your network and start seeing it, a network-science field guide proving that the connections that will change your career are already sitting one friend of a friend away.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of Friend of a Friend pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- Mark Granovetter's classic study **The Strength of Weak Ties** found that people landed new jobs far more often through acquaintances than close friends. Your strong ties all know the same things you do; it's the **weak ties**, people in other circles, who deliver genuinely new information and opportunities.
- Ronald Burt's research on **structural holes** shows that the real value in a network sits in the gaps *between* clusters. People who bridge otherwise-disconnected groups, **brokers**, get early access to novel ideas and consistently have their contributions rated more valuable and creative.
The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- Your Network Already Exists
- The Strength of Weak Ties
- Superconnectors and Preferential Attachment
- Brokers and the Value of Structural Holes
- It's a Small World After All
- Reconnecting Dormant Ties
- Birds of a Feather: Escaping Homophily
- Multiplex Ties: Relationships With Many Layers
- Why Networking Events Fail, and What Works
Finish Friend of a Friend tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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