Lynette Claire (Tacoma Entrepreneurship Network)

Lynette Claire, a professor at UPS, visited our class yesterday to talk about her work with the Tacoma Entrepreneurship Network.  She has a PhD in early entrepreneurship from the University of Oregon and spoke about the South Sound and the ways in which she wants to develop the local economy through education and community of entrepreneurs in our area.  She talked about one of her students' project, centsless.org, which is a social website that allows users to borrow gear and other items from others.  This seems like a great idea in theory, but in practice I expect that it will fail due to liability.  Unfortunately, the demographic of those who may want to borrow an item rather than buy it will include many who also wish to steal and misuse those items.  This could be problematic for the image of the site itself, which could lead to its demise.  Something similar happened with craigslist when many users were abusing the website to steal and manipulate others.  She also talked about the event held to bring students from the three south sound universities together for a competition in entrepreneurship.  The Innovate! Create! event, held in November of 2011, was created to solve a unique problem (waste), and the winners took away the reward of an iPad.  Though she didn't necessarily agree with the judges' decision on the winner, the event seems like a great opportunity in my opinion.  It seems like a great forum to meet other entrepreneurs and practice the problem-solving process with others.
Claire also mentioned "Networks 101" where she talked about two different types of social networks.  The first is a cohesive network, where everyone in the network knows everyone else.  The second, structural holes network, has the focal member completely connected but their connections are not connected.  The cohesive network, she said, is great for quality of information and self-correction, while the structural holes network is benefited by new information.  I found this very interesting because I am very much a part of a cohesive network.  I enjoy introducing my friends to my other friends, and sometimes they even become acquaintances or even friends themselves.  I have never been a person to spend time with a single person, rather I enjoy spending my social time in groups (mainly because there is less pressure in groups).  I haven't had a "best-friend" since elementary school (besides my fiance, which is a totally different type of relationship from a friendship), and I think this is the reason that I tend to create a cohesive network in my life.