It's a small, small world in corporate director-land!

Okay, this is just too cool not to share...

I was just looking for something in our ThomsonOne-Investment Banking database when I noticed a feature that I hadn't really explored before.  Under Screening & Analysis > Individuals > Officers & Directors > Connections I was able to track the connections between two directors or C-suite personnel from different corporations.

I'm sure you're wondering what on earth I find cool about that, right?

* Imagine that two companies have just announced an alliance. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how closely those two companies are connected via overlapping directorships, etc.?

* Or imagine two close competitors like Apple and Microsoft or WestJet and Air Canada -- wouldn't it be useful to know how closely their boards are connected?  Even if none of the board members are on both companies, perhaps they once were?  Or perhaps they were both on a different board with another director who could, theoretically, be a bridge between them?

The population of directors of major corporations is surprisingly small, and the "degrees of separation" between many companies is often far less than you might expect.  What does that mean for innovation? For corporate oversight?  You come up with the questions -- your business librarian team will help you figure out if there's information like this available so that you can find answers!

For instance, you know how there are Starbucks in many Chapters locations? Ever wonder just how close the top bosses of those two companies are?  Click on the image to the left to see the connections between the CEOs of both companies.

In total, ThomsonOne-Investment Banking was able to find 597 connections between Howard Schultz and Heather Reisman, but only one of them is active (all the people involved are currently in the same positions where the connection was formed), and that one is a fairly long chain involving 4 relationships between 5 people before you get both Starbucks and Chapters in the picture.

Appetite whetted?  ThomsonOne-IB also allows you to drill down through the relationships for a given executive.  See how many clicks it takes before your chosen executive ends up connected with William (Bill) Gates, Warren Buffett, or Lawrence (Larry) Page!

Or jump over to our Infomart database for a more Canadian perspective: Infomart includes a Directory of Directors that allows you to quickly find out who currently has an overlapping directorship in more than one company with your target execuitive.  

All of this talk of connections between organizations makes me think of resources that touch on ownership hierarchies and overlaps... likely a topic for another post, but if you're keen, check out Statistics Canada's Inter-Corporate Ownership data available for SFU researchers via ABACUS, as well as our ORBIS database.

Hope all that is helpful!

– Mark

P.S.:  We're here if you want to chat about such things...

• Mark Bodnar (Business – Burnaby): mbodnar@sfu.ca
• Megan Sorenson (Business – Vancouver): megan_sorenson@sfu.ca
• Andrea Cameron (Business – Surrey): amcamero@sfu.ca
• Carla Graebner (Economics – Burnaby): cgraebne@sfu.ca