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September 2004

Volume 110, Number 2
ajs Volume 110 Number 2 (September 2004): 349–99
© 2004 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0002-9602/2004/11002-0004$10.00
DOI: 10.1086/421787

Structural Holes and Good Ideas1

Ronald S. Burt

University of Chicago

This article outlines the mechanism by which brokerage provides social capital. Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so people connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Brokerage across the structural holes between groups provides a vision of options otherwise unseen, which is the mechanism by which brokerage becomes social capital. I review evidence consistent with the hypothesis, then look at the networks around managers in a large American electronics company. The organization is rife with structural holes, and brokerage has its expected correlates. Compensation, positive performance evaluations, promotions, and good ideas are disproportionately in the hands of people whose networks span structural holes. The between‐group brokers are more likely to express ideas, less likely to have ideas dismissed, and more likely to have ideas evaluated as valuable. I close with implications for creativity and structural change.

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  • 1Portions of this material were presented as the 2003 Coleman Lecture at the University of Chicago, at the Harvard‐MIT workshop on economic sociology, in workshops at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the University of Kentucky, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the University of Texas at Dallas, Universiteit Utrecht, and the “Social Aspects of Rationality” conference at the 2003 meetings of the American Sociological Association. I am grateful to Christina Hardy for her assistance on the manuscript and to several colleagues for comments affecting the final text: William Barnett, James Baron, Jonathan Bendor, Jack Birner, Matthew Bothner, Frank Dobbin, Chip Heath, Rachel Kranton, Rakesh Khurana, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Joel Podolny, Holly Raider, James Rauch, Don Ronchi, Ezra Zuckerman, and two AJS reviewers. I am especially grateful to Peter Marsden for his comments as discussant at the Coleman Lecture. Direct correspondence to Ron Burt, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637. E‐mail:

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