Yes, I believe that you can predict relationships and relationship potential! While I would say that, given that it is a major part of what we do at Four Groups, I was interested to read an interview between Stowe Boyd and Esther Dyson on the excellent Visible Path. The following extract is from Esther Dyson;
What I am trying to say is that human relations are much more subtle. Tools are very useful. If a relationship has a potential of 100, you can move it from 50 to 100 by using tools and having memory agents sending mail. But if the relationship has a potential of 50, it doesn’t matter how much mail you send, you can’t get it above 50. If you can get to 100% in some number of potential relationships, that’s a huge win. You just don’t want to believe you can’t get what isn’t achievable.
From my perspective, the interesting question(s) evolve around how people's behaviour would change or improve if you they could reliably predict the potential of their relationships prior to any interaction. In other words, what if you knew that the potential of a particular relationship at its outset was say 50%, 88% or 35%? Not only does this sorts of analysis lie at the core of 4G and is used to create some of the diagrams on our site, but I also wonder what forms social software and social networking would take if this sort of predictive information was available from the outset?
