Network lessons from the Pink Ribbon Rebellion
Submitted by Steve on February 6, 2012
From Seth Cohen, the Director of Network Initiatives for the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, for Working Wikily:
There is no question that there are many lessons to be learned from Komen’s unplanned Planned Parenthood experience. Politics aside, even while assessing all of the steps and missteps Komen has made (and, we hope, continues to learn from), the Pink Ribbon Rebellion demonstrated one thing Komen actually did right: it built a social network of activists bound together by a collective identity built on education, empowerment and interconnectedness. And this network, as we saw, doesn’t need Komen at its center—it is quite capable of taking on a life all its own.
Indeed, the Pink Ribbon Rebellion’s unique facts and storyline shed deep insight on the power of pink and the network of individuals who wear it. Herewith, I offer four key lessons we can derive from network deployment in the Pink Ribbon Rebellion and what its recent success teaches us about network-building for the future.