Previous Applications of SNA

In particular industries such as consulting and the pharmaceutical industry have been fast to adopt SNA as an organizational tool. These industries are knowledge-intensive by nature and have the need for efficient collaboration to meet deadlines.

On an organization wide scale SNA is often used for improving long-term revenue growth and innovation initiatives, increasing cross sales and supporting change management initiatives. Social network analysis is also used on departmental level (within and between departments) for improving knowledge-sharing, sharing of best-practices and improving workflows. Finally, SNA is typically used in connection to post-merger integration and work environment studies.

Large studies, such as for supporting change management initiatives, are rarely done more than once a year, whereas smaller studies, like team assessments and workflow improvements, can be carried out continuously within the organization.

SNA is a widely applicable tool and therefore not limited to just these types of studies. Social network analysis is, for instance, used for as different things as finding terror cell leaders and identifying influencers on Twitter for highly targeted marketing.