It raises a few interesting points about networks:

• Networks are everywhere! And it’s useful to analyse economic networks because you often find out interesting things. In this one the big news is that a lot of the most important ports in the network are places I’ve never heard of, and I bet a lot you haven’t heard of them either. One of the great things about network analysis is that you can learn about key players in the network, which might have been hard to identify otherwise.
• The hub ports seem to serve two purposes. Some of them are places that act as shipping conduits, like the Panama and Suez Canals. Others are endpoints, like New York/New Jersey and Antwerp. These are still conduits, but they are points of transition where cargo shifts from sea to land and vice versa. It would probably be useful to sort the ports along these lines.
• Network links are often surprisingly persistent. Antwerp has been a hub port for hundreds of years – since back in the time that Belgium was a major sea power. One of the things that surprised me in my thesis research was that Belgium is still a hub in international trade, even though we don’t think of it as a significant economic player anymore. Trading ties based on colonial relationships seem to persist for long after the formal ties have been severed as well. It is often very difficult to unbreak ties once they have been formed (and this is why it is often difficult to get new innovative ideas to diffuse through an economic network).

Networks are a central part of economic life. Gaining a better understanding of the network structures in which we’re embedded is an essential part of trying to get our innovations to spread. This study of international shipping gives us some useful insights into what we can learn from network analysis. What do you think you could learn if we studied the networks in your organisation?